diewilderonja

[diewilderonja]

Religious despair is often a defense against boredom and the daily grind of existence. Lacking intensity in our lives, we say that we are distant from God and then seek to make that distance into an intense experience. It is among the most difficult spiritual ailments to heal, because it is usually wholly illusory. There are definitely times when we must suffer God’s absence, when we are called to enter the dark night of the soul in order to pass into some new understanding of God, some deeper communion with him and with all creation. But this is very rare, and for the most part our dark nights of the soul are, in a way this is more pathetic than tragic, wishful thinking. God is not absent. He is everywhere in the world we are too dispirited to love. To feel him — to find him — does not usually require that we renounce all worldly possessions and enter a monastery, or give our lives over to some cause of social justice, or create some sort of sacred art, or begin spontaneously speaking in tongues. All to often the task to which we are called is simply to show a kindness to the irritating person in the cubicle next to us, say, or to touch the face of a spouse from whom we ourselves have been long absent, letting grace wake love from our intense, self-enclosed sleep.

Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

#thoughts travel far #on philosophy #on Christianity

[diewilderonja]

Navarre, Spain by Margarita Calderó

#europa

[diewilderonja]

#the great outdoors

[diewilderonja]

Alpe di Suisi | rosenfeld.mandy

#europa

[diewilderonja]

-Ophelia-

#art

[diewilderonja]

The more "empowered" Disney tries to write their heroines as, the less interesting and charismatic they become, ironically.

#thoughts travel far #on literature

[diewilderonja]

15th century church I stumbled across in northern Sweden. Because it has never been heated, the original colours have been preserved.

(Photo: d.)

#europa #architecture

[diewilderonja]

#thoughts travel far #on Christianity

[diewilderonja]

Conques, France (by Velocia)

#europa

[diewilderonja]

Oct 14, 2023 - voguegirl.

#motherhood

[diewilderonja]

Nice, France. May 2023

by Martina V.

#europa

[diewilderonja]

#amor necessitudo

[diewilderonja]

thinking about that one feminist I read who said we have to admit to ourselves that the perfect hookup who magically knows how to touch us is nothing more than a myth, because it is just not possible to be “good at” sex in a technical skill kind of way, which applies equally to everyone we sleep with. we all know, when we’re being honest with ourselves, that the only good sex we have ever had was in long term relationships with people who know us and love us. and so inasmuch as that is true, the sexual revolution has been a pointless failure. it is not helping women have better more fulfilling sex lives. it is just helping them have more worse sex.

and this is the horrible tragedy of lines like “struggled through the night with someone new”, “you never measured up in any measure of a man”, and “it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden”. of course it wasn’t sexy, of course he didn’t measure up, of course it was a struggle. there’s no familiarity there. what a fucking nightmare.

#thoughts travel far #on modernism #on zeitgeist

[diewilderonja]

by Christian Hunker

#by the sea

[diewilderonja]

Before You Wake by Nevin Johnson

#america

[diewilderonja]

#america

[diewilderonja]

Sin is doing things that deny the love we should have for ourselves and others [... but] God loves us even when we do not know enough to love ourselves.

Rev. Jude Winkler, O.F.M. Conv.

#thoughts travel far #on Christianity