Things

13.5.15

– Immersive experience

– dud

14.5.15

– Filling your world with GOD by saturating your mind with Scripture…

18.5.15

– Annual retreat:
“Together in Solitude”
Kotagiri, 14-17.5.15
Super!  🙂

– Innocence ~ ignorance

19.5.15

– “answerability”

– “non-alibi”

– Readings:
Foreword by Michael Holquist in “Toward a Philosophy of the Act” by M.M. Bakhtin

– Rabelaisian

– The Schiller Institute

– Readings:
“The Art of Stillness” – Pico Iyer

– “Where is home?” – TED Talk by Pico Iyer

– Be physically active.
Be mentally alert.
Be spiritually alive.
Everything else is optional & peripheral…
Amen!

20.5.15

– Contemplation ~ happiness ~ compassion

– Alternate day – contemplative – silence, solitude, stillness, journaling, etc. (with few activities)
Alternate day – active – study, ministry, chores, etc. (with few breaks).
Entertainment – movies, music, etc. – Sundays (Sabbath)

– pressense

– No rule, no rhythm.

– Vipassana – ‘seeing through’, insight

– Whatever was previously prohibited, should now be kept to a minimum.

– The power to perform (within the mould)
Vs.
The power to break out (of the mould)

– The method in the madness
&
The madness in the method

– The necessity of manual labour for well-being!
“Work with your hands”

– Theological knowledge
Vs.
Spiritual truth

– What could be more powerful, pervasive & decisive than biology or economics??

21.5.15

– Maybe the greatest thing anyone could do is just to know & be themselves – to relax & enjoy, in a world that pressurises & dictates. This might just be the only way to truly love (others) too!

– By trying to change myself & measure up to the definitions & requirements of this culture, I might just be missing out on the greatest spiritual revolution that could be brewing within this dark night of the soul!
Thank GOD for depression. Glory!
Amen.

– Patience is the universal key.

– A new kind of contemplation – my kind!

– The greatest progress is made in not moving, even when everything is crumbling!
Stand your ground, even when the earth is giving way.

– Unshakable
Invincible
Indestructible

– metonymy

– Was Emily Dickinson a lesbian?!

– The explosive, subversive & disruptive organ, in:
Martin Luther King Jr.
Thomas Merton
Emily Dickinson
, etc….!

– Most of you is not you!

– Truth ~ power ~ life!

– Kierkegaard – is the corollary also true?
E.g. “The minority is always right.”

– We are more afraid of what threatens to come out from within us, than what hits us from without… & we should be!
1 John 4:4b

22.5.15

– Abortive efforts

– Cognitive distortions
Mental delusions

– Genuine sadness
Vs.
Clinical depression

– Self-perpetuating vicious cycle

– The inner body

– Movies:
“Leviathan” – Andrei Zvyagintsev
Who/what is the monster today? Only man-made ones!
Where is GOD in all of this – just a helpless victim or indifferent observer?? Victim yes, observer yes. But helpless no, & indifferent no.
Truth –> righteousness –> justice
Vs.
Truth –> Christ –> Church

– The agonistic
&
The antagonistic

23.5.15

– Before you express or project your own negative views and emotions on others around (especially those closest to you), just stop……!

– How can you have a contemplative lifestyle without any time or space devoted to meditation??

– “Lawless teachers”

– Movies:
“Her” – Spike Jonze
WOW! I’m her & she’s him……
Even relationships are mortal. Amen.
What does a relationship with GOD feel like??

24.5.15

– “A man who reads about the doctrines of the Jodo (Pure Land) without receiving oral instruction will miss the thing really necessary to the attainment of Ojo (Enlightenment).”
— Honen

– Movies:
“The Shape of Things”
Is she a monster, or a genius, or both?
Is art amoral?
Abuse: deception ~ manipulation ~ coercion!

– Movies:
“Mad Max: Fury Road”
Witness (to) this feminine, Eastern, green, human Christology!