Colored perceptions.

Farbenkreis zur Symbolisierung des Menschlichen Geistes und Eelenlebens: 1809, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Whores and sinners and saints.

Threepenny Opera, University of Nevada, Reno

"Doesn’t surprise me that Christ our Lord preferred to live with whores & sinners, seeing I go in for that myself."

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Venetian Epigrams, as translated by Jerome Rothenberg

High lonesome high art.

Happy Dependence Day!

Lutherans singing praise songs at a contemporary worship service.

"We might well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until He does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration... The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees... So He conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for Himself."

--A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Divine Conquest

Hat tip.

Happy Independence Day!

Firecracker.

Play with your food (containers).

Thanks, Dad.

Thank you for removing my training wheels, and untying Mother's apron strings.

The yardstick.

Three Standard Stoppages, Marcel Duchamp

"The great heresies in the early Church arose not from the rapid expansion result of these unknown [and untrained] teachers; but in those churches which were longest established, and where the Christians were not so busily engaged in converting the heathen around them. The Church of that day was apparently quite fearless of any dangers that the influx of large numbers of what we should call illiterate converts might lower the standard of church doctrine. She held the tradition handed down by the apostles, and expected the new converts to grow up into it, to maintain it and to propagate it. And so in fact they did. The danger to doctrine lay not in these illiterate converts on the outskirts; but at home, in places like Ephesus and Alexandria, amongst the more highly educated and philosophically minded Christians. It was against them that she had to maintain the doctrine."

... Roland Allen (1869-1947), "The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It", London: World Dominion Press, 1949, reprint, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1997, p. 64

Source: Hubblesite.org

"Whatever be our conception of the universe we must, it is obvious, start somehow; we must begin with something; and the something with which we begin, from the very fact that we do begin with it, must itself be without explanation, since, if something else were invoked to explain it, then the 'something else' must needs be logically prior to that which it is invoked to explain. Thus the 'something' being explained by a logically prior 'something else' could not have been ultimate."

-- C. E. M. Joad

Flung at random.

Hubble, NASA

"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."

-- Andre Malraux
French author & resistance leader (1901 - 1976)

Kunst.

SYMPHONIE NO.9
Ludwig van Beethoven
Wiener Philharmoniker
Claudio Abbado, cond.

Deutsche Grammophon


A beautiful recording, and perhaps the most stunningly beautiful LP jacket I have. Gold foil and Gustav Klimt.

Get an ear-bud full.

Whoa yeah

DELIRIUM TREMOLOS
Ray Wylie Hubbard

Philo

Alright, Jack.

"That is why I often find myself at such cross-purposes with the modern world: I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans."

-- Clive Staples (Jack) Lewis

Too bad BP didn't read The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."

- Douglas Adams

My Cousin Harry.

"I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell."

-- Harry S Truman

Fair warning.

Complete with dangling preposition.

This Week's R.I.P.

LENA HORN
Lena Horn

Tops

I don't know what to say.

National Day of Prayer

Today is the National Day of Prayer. The Christian Right and the Secular Left are going at it, tooth and nail.

But what does The Authority have to say about such things?

Matthew 6:1-15 (New International Version)


"Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

"This, then, is how you should pray:
" 'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.' For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

'Nuff said.