king of unhealthy living

shoes mar a delight of the sea. the shore would facilitate a wilful flight of combined truths, injuring beehives and we sigh for a long time. quietly is the grower's passion that warrants a way to escape. a flicker, cool and jangling with brevity, awaits the baroque accoutrement. Maine folk are youthful and ruthless, harbouring laughter with generous conversation. dance forty seven might well be tomorrow's engagement, as the options are forthcoming well into sundown. occasionally, your behaviour may undo the infinitesimal design, in keeping the same omissions, which mostly cave and rumble unconsciously. witless ouroboros clings to the stars, attempting to prosper, grinning and leering with a mad hunger. carving desperation out of longing and starvation out of the flesh. tumid and empty, it trips and staggers vertiginously into the ocean.

home is something you always leave behind

The case for a God who saves people who don't call themselves Christians

I tried living for myself, that is to say, without God once. It didn't really work out for me

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So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.

- Acts 17:22-23

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- Do you believe that the God of the old testament, that is to say of Israel that is to say of Abraham and of the Jewish people is the same God that the Christians worship?

- Yes

- Do you believe that the God that the Koran describes is the same as the God of the bible?

- I'm not too sure

- Do you believe that the God that Westboro baptist church worships is the God that we worship?

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What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. 

Romans 3:9

For the Scriptures tell us, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.”When people work, their wages are not a gift, but something they have earned. But people are counted as righteous, not because of their work, but because of their faith in God who forgives sinners. 

Romans 4:3-5

For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one. 

Romans 3:28 - 30

 ---

- do you think, barring those who are blatantly serving and worshipping themselves and their own desires, and those who have given themselves up to what they know is evil, that we are all attempting to serve the same God in our own flawed and uniquely misguided ways?

- i think it's possible... but at the same time, I think some of us are doing a better job of it than others

---

"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits." 

Matthew 7:15-20

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So which of us do you think is Cain 

and which of us is Abel?

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. - John 14:6

The way to worship - to obey God... this is what it looks like. No one comes to the Father except through following Jesus Christ's example -- Jesus doesn't say, no one comes to the father except through saying my name. If Jesus lives in us, through our lives, then perhaps others are acquainted with him through us? Does that make their journey any less authentic than if they had met him through scripture? Or at a church event?

Sacred Heart

Isn't that a pretty sun
setting in a pretty sky?
Will we stay and watch it darken?
Will we stay and watch it darken?  

The church not made by hands
Not contained by man
That precious place
Unmade by man

---

What is prayer anyway?

Clasping of the hands, head bowed, eyes closed, solemn faced.

There's more to it than that, right

It's about attention, isn't it? Intensely attending a certain matter

I thought it was about supplication. Asking humbly for something to happen or some harm to be averted.

It's a conversation, isn't it. A conversation between heart and spirit. That's why it requires so much concentration.

How do you mean

We're so used to using our flesh to communicate, we're not so good at speaking from the heart. Or listening to it for that matter.

Smoke rose in the distance, a slow and ominous plume. Sirens wailed softly beyond the horizon.

So if prayer is just talking then what's it good for? Why should we pray for this or that or anything if it doesn't actually change anything

What makes you say it doesn't change anything

Well I can talk to you about the shape of this table for as long as I want, but that won't make it into a triangle.

That's true

No, that's right. Just talking about it wouldn't change anything - but what if you were talking to a carpenter instead.

What do you mean

If I were a carpenter and had my tools with me, I could certainly make the table into a triangle - but the owner probably wouldn't be very happy with me

... What are you trying to say?

The growing glow tinged the sidewalks orange and cast long flickering shadows across the bistro walls.

Sorry, let me try putting it another way.

No, I see what he's saying. You're saying that things only change if you talk to someone who has the power or ability to change things, right?

Sure, yes I get that, but my original point still stands: that just merely talking about something - without taking any further action doesn't accomplish anything.

No, of course not. But that's not to say that talking about it isn't useful.

I feel like we're not talking about prayer anymore.

... what do you think it means to pray for someone

I always thought it was something like hoping for the best? Like sending positive energy or something. Or at the very least, just spending a few minutes thinking of them

Which goes back to attention and awareness

But how on earth does that benefit the person you're praying for. I just don't see how logically it would make any difference at all.

Unless you do something about it

Right?

But how do you know what to do about it? It's not always so simple

Perspiration forms like dew on their foreheads. The dried wood crackles and the ambient roar of combustion makes it harder to hear each other.

So a prayer is the meditative component that hopefully leads to epiphany and effective intervention, but without action to back it up doesn't actually make any difference in the real world. Ok, I get what you're saying.

I see! why didn't you just say so

The smell of burnt concrete and smoke engulfs the group. The flames lap at their shoes.

No, that's not it. That's not it at all.

do no harm

---

All compassion is self-pity 

- D.H. Lawrence

---

The lady in the public health lecture mentions something about 'case-finding' and how it's different from normal population screening. The idea is, she explains, that by using factors like smoking and body mass index and previous hospital admissions, you can identify asymptomatic people who are at high risk of developing a serious illness. GPs would then phone them up at home and construct a 'virtual ward' to take care of them in the community, in theory pre-empting hospital admissions by picking up and treating illnesses early. My first reaction to that is 'whoa hold on... you mean to say we're having enough trouble treating the present sick and dying population adequately, and yet you now want doctors to invade people's homes and look after the healthy? Maybe we're going about this the wrong way.'

Maybe the reason the NHS is stretched so thin is because we are trying so hard - maybe unrealistically - to cure everyone and keep everyone healthy. Endlessly optimizing. We're trying to export franchises while our flagship branch is going bankrupt. Buying assets with money we don't have. The idea is that prevention will help save money in the long run, but we spend so much money on trying to save money. It feels a bit like those promotions where you buy 10 more items to qualify for a 10% discount. Are we really saving, or just spending more? The costs of living in a too-health-conscious society. It's obviouslyh better to prevent hospital admissions and to treat patients in the community - to preempt the disease, but there is a cost as well to both patient and doctor by effectively having a patient take up residence in the practice, just in case he/she catches a cold. Is that what the NHS is doing right now? Inspecting every nook and cranny for potential maladies and bringing to a 10 minute consultation a laundry list of benign lumps, problems and worries.

Our resources are being stretched thin, reducing our pay to provide more services and facilities. Telling a starving man to eat less to save money to buy more food. We are looking to expand our kingdoms while our castles are crumbling. Why don't we focus on what we already are trying to do. Why don't we focus on doing that properly first. You learn 3 chords on the guitar and decide to pick up the harmonica. Just because you can do something, doesn't necessarily mean you should. Maybe we get greedy and overlook the risks of treatment, the harms of over-diagnosis, Sometimes doing nothing is the lesser of two evils. Maybe we forget. You can't learn everything. You can't save everyone.

social media will tear us apart

Now I take it that when we understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience, we reduce it to the level of 'Nature' in the sense that we suspend our judgements of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any), and treat it in terms of quantity. This repression of elements in what would otherwise be our total reaction to it is sometimes very noticeable and even painful: something has to be overcome before we can cut up a dead man or live animal in a dissecting room. These objects resist the movement of the mind whereby we thrust them into the world of mere Nature. But in other instances too, a similar price is exacted for our analytical knowledge and manipulative power, even if we have ceased to count it. We do not look at trees either as Dryads or as beautiful objects while we cut them into beams: the first man who did so may have felt the price keenly, and the bleeding trees in Virgil and Spenser may be far-off echoes of that primeval sense of impiety.The stars lost their divinity as astronomy developed, and the Dying God has no place in chemical agriculture.
[...]
It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost. 

- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

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Then Jesus told them this parable: "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

---

- why don't people seem to like me?

- do you really want to know

- what do you mean

- why people don't like you


- why

- most people don't want to be changed - and all you do is try to change people



- you're a real dick sometimes

---


"Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

---

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now. 

- Jack Kerouac

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- and then I started wondering if it works the other way as well

... how do you mean

- like maybe every time you sin you lose something precious

---

what is humanity? what does it mean to be human, anyway? how do we lose it - or more importantly, how do we hold on to it? it's something to do with choice - the kinds of choices we make determine what sort of creature we become. Which choices are human. Maybe hell is losing your humanity, and living with others who have similarly lost theirs. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Difference between heaven and hell: the key is how we treat other people and ourselves.

only time will tell / always know, never now

can i tell you the real truth? by the time you find out it's perfect, you've put out 3 other records they don't care so much about.

---

trying to tell which moments are sacred and which are merely sentimental

ode to shunkan

the holiness of trees / how to be clean

song of the month #2 / cliches come true

you don't have to go far

one day someone
will truly love you
and you will grow
sentimental
and believe in platitudes

i ain't afraid of no ghost