Istanbul In Autumn

Coincidentia Oppositorum

One Must Imagine...

The Healing

Re-Readings

Re-reading Tillich returns me to the Existentialists--and that means, among others (but not least among them), Albert Camus.



The Cheerful Nihilist sings with Eliot:

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

wabi sabi

There's Always Beauty

When you grow tired of trying to nail down the truth, or even the good, there's always beauty.

Autumn Winds

In a world of universal poverty/The philosophers alone will be fat/Against the autumn winds/In an autumn that will be perpetual.

~ Wallace Stevens

Paul Tillich Resources

Here.

But God Rejoices

But God rejoices more over one true lover than over a thousand hirelings or mercenaries.

~ Theologia Germanica, Ch. 38

A Man And His Books

Jean-Paul Sartre

As The Evening Rain Falls

My life may appear melancholy,
But traveling through this world
I have entrusted myself to heaven.
In my sack, a couple of quarts of rice;
By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.
If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment
or illusion,
I cannot say--wealth and honor are nothing but dust.
As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage
And stretch out both feet in answer.

~ Ryokan, 19th century.
Tr. John Stevens (slightly altered)

Debussy - Arabesque No.1 and No.2

wabi-sabi

Read.