Awarenessism

[awarenessism]

In origin Christianity is not a father-religion; if it is a religion at all it is a son-religion, namely a brotherly community in the situation of the human God, without privileges and without the rebellions that are necessary against them.

Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

[awarenessism]

no more than a single lifetime after the masts of Cook's vessels had appeared off the coast at Waimea a commission was appointed at the insistence of foreigners to determine the real ownership of all the lands in the kingdom which thereafter foreigners would be able to purchase outright on the same terms as Hawaiians but it was a manner of thinking about the land which only the foreigners understood and after ten years when the commission's Great Division went into effect the control of the land of Hawai'i was in the hands of foreigners who had title to the greater part of them allowing a portion for the chiefs and their overseers though that might be further reduced upon claim and then there remained fragments for the people still living in the valleys whose ancestors had built the walls of the terraces

W. S. Merwin, The Folding Cliffs

[awarenessism]

The faith which is obtained by gazing upon the suffering and crucified God in this mysticism of the cross prevents them from sinking back into misery, from giving themselves up for lost and often enough from committing suicide out of despair.

Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

[awarenessism]

Profundity is the deep existential realization of an idea which corresponds directly with God.

Søren Kierkegaard

[awarenessism]

Exegesis was the first parenthesis.

Søren Kierkegaard

[awarenessism]

La Grande Illusion (1937)

[awarenessism]

Opportunity makes thieves.

Søren Kierkegaard

[awarenessism]

The "man of movement" has nothing eternal, and therefore nothing firm, so as a consequence thereof he has not the courage to become the recognizable individual who wills something and will take risks for it. Essentially he does not act at all, in the outcry he makes a feigned sally, his activity culminates in shouting out something. As when children are at play and one of them suddenly shouts, "Why not play this game?" the man of movement shouts, "Why not do this now?" Thereupon when they have become many, when the majority is on their side and the cause is forced through – then the man of movement is for the first time really recognizable, for he goes about with New Year's congratulations and says, "It was really I who stood at the head of the Movement and the New Direction." Sometimes it comes to pass that men behold with wonder several men going about with congratulations, each one of them saying, "It was really I who stood at the head of the Movement, etc." So it appears that there was not merely one but several men at the head. This comical confusion contains a deep truth, namely, that no one at all stood at the head, and therefore the one is as much justified as the other in going about with congratulations. A true extraordinarius who stood alone, forsaken, pointed out in the pillory of the special individual, a true extraordinarius who was recognizable by the fact that he was executed -well, it is a matter of course that after this he cannot very well go about with congratulations – but neither can he be mistaken for another.

Søren Kierkegaard, The Book on Adler

[awarenessism]

Resurrection faith does not arise on the basis of evidence, of which the chief priests and soldiers had plenty, but on the basis of the experienced presence of the risen Christ, by testimony of those to whom he appeared, and by his own continuing presence among his disciples.

M. Eugene Boring, “Matthew 28:16-20, The Great Commission.”

[awarenessism]

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all - what then would life be but despair?

Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

[awarenessism]

I was involved in so many doubts, so many errors, that all efforts to learn were, as I saw it, of no other help to me then that I might more and more discover my ignorance.

René Descartes

[awarenessism]

La Grande Illusion (1937)

[awarenessism]

I was a guest in the house of their life. People took me in. I made no judgments.

Richard Price, The Paris Review

[awarenessism]

The Holy Spirit who guides into all truth, may be present not so much exclusively on one side of a theological dispute as in the very encounter of diverse visions held by persons . . . who share a faithfulness and commitment to Christ and to each other.

Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (1986)

[awarenessism]

It follows from this that reality changes if one's self-definition changes.

David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission

[awarenessism]

God as revealed in history is the One who has elected Israel. The purpose of the election is service, and when this is withheld, election loses its meaning. Primarily Israel is to serve the marginal in its midst: the orphan, the widow, the poor, and the stranger. Whenever the people of Israel renew their covenant with Yahweh, they recognize that they are renewing their obligation to the victims of society.

David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission

[awarenessism]

Human experience is generally understood as the complex effect of social conditions, social arrangements, effort and one’s ‘destiny’, seen as something enabled (if not determined) by the divine. This perspective frees the individual from living under the punitive threat of his or her failures or disabilities. The feeling of connectivity to a force larger than the human is what imbues each life with dignity and significance, whatever the circumstances in which it is lived. It is this that aids in precluding the kind of self-destructive negativity and nihilism evident in urban centers of the United States. I would argue that the capacity to thrive amidst the most challenging of circumstances has everything to do with belief in God as a living presence discernible in all things whether animate or apparently inanimate, whatever the name by which one appeals to this larger force, and whatever the philosophical system within which such a recognition is held.

Lata Mani, SacredSecular