On the idea that we can control the environment

"If the Earth came with an operating manual, the chapter on climate might begin with a caveat that the system has been adjusted at the factory for optimum comfort, so don't touch the dials." —Dr. J. W. C. White of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research of the University of Colorado. Quoted in a 1993 NYT article.

Sent to me from a friend who knows

We do not first get all the answers and then live in the light of our understanding. We must rather plunge into life--meeting what we have to meet and experiencing what we have to experience--and in the light of living try to understand. If insight comes at all, it will not be before, but only through and after experience.
—John Claypool, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler

On our contrary God

But we rebel against the impossible. I sense a wish in some professional religion-mongers to make God possible, to make him comprehensible to the naked intellect, domesticate him so that he's easy to believe in. Every century the Church makes a fresh attempt to make Christianity acceptable. But an acceptable Christianity is not Christian; a comprehensible God is no more than an idol. I don't want that kind of God. — Madeline L'Engle.

Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. — Timothy Keller, The Reason for God.

On Embracing Mystery

God doesn’t reveal His plan. He reveals Himself. – Frederick Buechner

On the Hardness of the Human Heart

We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning. George Steiner, professor and writer.

Karl Friedrich Höcker (center), adjutant to the commandant of the Auschwitz/Birkenau extermination camp, enjoying a moment with fellow workers. The picture was snapped at Solahütte, a Nazi retreat center only 30 kilometers from the horrors of Auschwitz. Höcker served at Auschwitz during the most deadly time period, from June to December 1944. During this time, over 320,000 Hungarians—Jews, gypsies and others—were gassed, so many that the crematoriums could not keep up, and bodies were burned in gasoline-fueled piles in a nearby forest. (For more about The Höcker Album, go here.)

On diverse paths

We can all follow God 

But He will not lead us all 

to the same place— 

there is no place big enough. 

Nor will He lead us all 

in the same direction— 

there is no road wide enough. 

Nor will He lead us all 

at the same pace— 

there is no faith consistently strong enough.

We can all follow God 

    to the place of His choosing, 

      whether crowded or no; 

    by the way of His choosing, 

      whether well-worn or no; 

    at the pace of His choosing, 

      whether fast or slow. 

     W. S.

On Embracing Inconsistency

The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight, the grey area. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairy-land. He has always cared more for truth than consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and contradictions along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight. He sees two different pictures at once, and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed there was such a thing as faith, but such a thing as free will also. He admired youth because it was young, and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of a healthy man. -- G. K. Chesterton