2
" perhaps, all these years, historians had been unwilling to recognize history as a spiral because a spiral was so difficult to describe. was war, then, the big solution after all? war the great aphrodisiac, the great source of world adrenalin, the solvent of ennui, angst, melancholia, accidia, spleen? war itself a massive sexual act. -war, finally, the controller, the trimmer & excisor; the justifier of fertility?" --the Wanting Seed/Burgess "
4
" Have you ever been to the beach and wanted to feed the seagulls? The problem is you tear off a little crust from your sandwich and toss it to one, and ten more show up. Toss a little more and a flock descends. You start to wonder: if I run out of bread, will I become the meal?
Turkeys are different. They startle easily and run for the barn. In the wild, they run for the hills. Of course, they’re very tasty. Benjamin Franklin thought them majestic enough to be an emblem for our country. I’m sorry, but Thanksgiving would be downright depressing. There’s our national symbol lying stuffed and roasted and ready to carve up for hungry guests.
And then we have the eagles. Our forefathers were trained in the Bible. […]They would have known Isaiah 40:31. “Those who wait upon the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” They were making war on the greatest power in the world of the time; the world was watching them. What could this band of commoners do?
What troubles me about our country today is how many seagulls there are, scrambling for more. Remember the movie “Finding Nemo”? “Mine, mine, mine!” And we sure have a lot of gutless turkeys running for the barn whenever hard decisions have to be made; like how to keep our country solvent so our children won’t be in soup lines…
Where are the eagles? That’s what I want to know. Please, God, we need us some eagles! "
― Francine Rivers
6
" I don’t think that loneliness is necessarily a bad or unconstructive condition. My own skill at jamming time may actually be dependent on some fluid mixture of emotions, among them curiosity, sexual desire, and love, all suspended in a solvent medium of loneliness. I like the heroes or heroines of books I read to be living alone, and feeling lonely, because reading is itself a state of artificially enhanced loneliness. Loneliness makes you consider other people’s lives, makes you more polite to those you deal with in passing, dampens irony and cynicism. The interior of the Fold is, of course, the place of ultimate loneliness, and I like it there. But there are times when the wish for others’ voices, for friendliness returned, reaches unpleasant levels, and becomes a kind of immobilizing pain. That was how it felt as I finished packing up the box of sex machines. "
― Nicholson Baker , The Fermata
7
" They say in Zen, waking up to life requires three things: great faith, great doubt, and great effort. Faith isn’t a way of going to sleep. It’s the work of waking up. And, in order to wake up, you’ll need both great faith and great doubt. In itself, doubt is neither good nor bad. Its value depends on what you do with it. You can doubt what’s real in order to stay asleep or you can doubt your daydreams in order to wake up. You can use doubt to protect you from the truth or you can use doubt to leave you vulnerable to it. You’ll have doubts regardless. Repurpose them for the sake of faith. Saving doubt is a strong solvent that can burn holes in your [worldview] and lead you back to the work of being faithful to life and, thus, to God. Practicing doubt for the sake of faith is hard work and it demands great effort. Great faith, great doubt, great effort. "