Sunday, May 24, 2009

May 30, 1940. New York

Instead of having faith, which is a virtue, and therefore nourishes the soul and gives it a healthy life, people merely have a lot of opinions, which excite the soul but don't give it anything to feed it, just wear it out until it falls from exhaustion. 
An opinion isn't one thing or the other: it is neither science nor faith, but has a little bit of either one. It is a rationalization bolstered up by some orthodoxy which you happen to respect which, naturally, starves the mind instead of feeding it (and that is what people who have no faith imagine faith does, but they don't know what they are talking about, because faith is a virtue and active habit which cannot even pretend to rationalize anything it seeks what is beyond reason).
In this situation, where there are hundreds of people which no faith, who don't really believe anything much, long inquiries are constantly being carried out as to what various persons "believe." Scientists, advertising men, sociologists, soldiers, critics, are all asked what they believe inasmuch as they are scientists, advertising men, etc. Apparently there is a separate belief appropriate to every walk of life. Anyway, they all answer with brisk one thousand word articles stating some opinion or other that they have picked up somewhere. The result is enough to make you break down and sob. 
H.G. Wells has tried to spend his whole life telling people "what he believes." that is, trying to get them to accept his own confused opinions about the purpose of human life, if any. Since, from what I hear, he isn't even a particularly good scientist, he hasn't even got the basis he thinks he has for all his other statements: but even if he were a good scientist, his science isn't a sufficient basis for the metaphysical and moral statements he tries to make. At the same time he complicates his position very curiously by denying that metaphysics or morals are really relevant at all. His life work would be a spectacular failure if there could be anything spectacular about someone so completely unimportant as H. G. Wells.
It should be the great pride and strength of every Christian that we have no ready, ten-minute, brisk, chatty answer to the question what we believe, except in the words of the Apostle's Creed which are not really comprehensible to scientists anyway. It should be our greatest strength that we don't have, on the end of our tongues, a brief and pithy rationalization for the structure and purpose of the whole universe, only a statement that, to a scientist, is a scandal: an article of faith. God created the world and everything in it for Himself, and the heavens proclaim His glory. It should be our greatest strength that we don't have any rationalizations to explain the war "scientifically" and have no "scientific" solution to all our economic problems.
The greatest weakness of Marxists, for example, is the readiness with which they can explain absolutely anything in brisk and chatty and pseudoscientific terms. They have not yet begun to feel ridiculous since their explanations have taken to contradicting themselves completely from one day to the next: they still believe that the are being scientific. Surely, the faith that science can contradict itself and still be science is a faith that doesn't honor science at all, because the only value science pretends to have is that it is certain and cannot contradict itself.
Faith on the other hand is always contradicting itself, because everything we say about God is so inadequate that it always runs us head first into a paradox.
In certain things, it is even more the glory of the Catholic than that of the skeptic to say "I don't know."
As a matter of fact, the true skeptics doubts in order that he may know. If there is no other certainty, he doubts so as to reduce everything to the level of his own, human, and fallible notions of certainty. But a Christian believes in order to submit all the products of his own fallible judgement to the test of a revelation that is infallible and divine and eternal-- as obscure as it is infallible, obscure and mysterious because it is as simple as it is divine.

Thomas Merton-Run to the Mountain, page 126-27

Monday, April 20, 2009

I think I want to blog again.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Frida Kahlo

'The value of Kahlo's art, apart from its memorable self-expression, lies in how it investigates and lays bare larger issues of identity. This work(see below) focuses most on the mixed heritage of Latin America; others deal more directly with sexuality, feminine identity, and gender equality, all in the context of Kahlo's own life.'







Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Friday, January 23, 2009

I need to read these words everyday

Who has believed what they heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgement he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. 
Isaiah 53:1-9

Thursday, January 22, 2009


So she told me more and more of her beautiful land; and I told her as much, yes, more than I wanted to, about mine; and we became inseparable. Then this deeper recognition came and grew. I felt my own soul rise and lift its wings, as it were. Life got bigger. It seemed as if I understood--as I never had before--as if I could Do things--as if I too could grow--if she would help me. And then It came--to both of us, all at once. 
A still day--on the edge of the world, their world. The two of us, gazing out over the far dim forestland below, talking of heaven and earth and human life, and of my land other lands and what they needed and what I hoped to do for them--
"If you will help me," I said.
She turned to me, with that high, sweet look of hers, and then, as her eyes rested in mine and her hands too--then suddenly there blazed out between us a farther glory, instant, overwhelming--quite beyond any words of mine to tell.

'And lord I truly am awake
And lord, truly I am afraid
And, lord, truly I remain…'

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Thursday, January 15, 2009

If anyone knows someone trying to sell or get rid of a turntable, let me know!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

creeped out of the house like a mouse.

Monday, January 5, 2009

being in this house is making me so depressed. i really hope i feel better tomorrow and can go on an adventure. 

I like this photo and the tattoo.


photo taken from here