Wisdom's Wild Garden

Your mind is an ecosystem. Make it a garden. Make it a wilderness.

[one-small-garden]

“And for a moment he lifted up the Phial and looked down at his master, and the light burned gently now with the soft radiance of the evening-star in summer, and in that light Frodo’s face was fair of hue again, pale but beautiful with an elvish beauty, as of one who has long passed the shadows. And with the bitter comfort of that last sight Sam turned and hid the light and stumbled on into the growing dark.”

— of Sam, The Two Towers (via one-small-garden)

[philosophicalconservatism]

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

Lord Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher.

a forced collectivism is not community.

(via philosophicalconservatism)

[westdesertsage]

Includes Nestle, H&M, Microsoft, Apple, and Hersey’s.

[westdesertsage]

Cloth manufacturers moved to Latin America and Southeast Asia, where workers today get sick from the same conditions that were common in the United States a century ago.

Erik Loomis

[one-small-garden]

“Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.”

— Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories

[westdesertsage]

My mind is so foolish so simple

Lao Tzu

[westdesertsage]

Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, ‘I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?’ “‘We are not stoning you for any of these,’ replied the Jews, ‘but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.’ “Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your Law, “I have said you are gods”? If he called them “gods,” to whom the word of God came—and the Scriptures cannot be broken—what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world?’

John 10:31-39

[westdesertsage]

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible: and to become like him, is to become holy, just, and wise.

Socrates (via Plato)

[westdesertsage]

You cannot easily convince mankind that they should pursue virtue or avoid vice, not merely in order that a man may seem to be good, which is the reason given by the world ... [T]he truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous--he is perfect righteousness; and he of us who is the most righteous is most like him.

Socrates (via Plato)

[westdesertsage]

“Ask and ye shall receive.” Why a sincere love of truth always leads out of illusion and to God—whether for Socrates, the Brahmans, or Lao Tzu.

[westdesertsage]

Classics are works of unmatched clarity of expression. How useless, then, it is to comment on, defend, or interpret them. And if commentary on classic works is useless, how much more useless to comment on divine works!

It is useless even to comment on God’s handiwork in nature.

[westdesertsage]

Explanation was originally a theological exercise, since every connection is evidence of design.

[westdesertsage]

Knowing how to endure is to be all-embracing all-embracing means impartial impartial means king

Lao Tzu

[westdesertsage]

The “culture wars” have been set up to engender fruitless strife.

[westdesertsage]

Science and knowledge are physical gifts, not spiritual gifts. But then how can it seem that wisdom leads to God? Jesus said that spiritual things “are not revealed to the wise, but to children.” But in the same way that strong legs can take a man on a long pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where one can learn the truth, a strong mind can take a man on a long pilgrimage to understanding the Bible, when by the mistakes of his teachers and his own pride he has been lead very far astray. But none can help others on any such path until they’ve removed the beam from their own eye. The object of true philosophy is not teaching but clearing vision.

Aphorisms have this virtue, that they show obstacles to be obstacles. They bring prejudices to light.

[westdesertsage]

Every explanation whatsoever only adds to the wonder of a phenomenon—displaying connections where entropy would dictate none. And why should we expect a universe, where everything has connection and even random processes (such as quantum ones) have law, to be itself disconnected from anything higher? We have to train ourselves not to experience the wonder of God in everything—and this we have done very well.

The human desire for transcendence is a desire for God, for only the Ultimate is true transcendence, only the transcendence of everything else is real transcendence, and not merely skipping to a slightly higher plane. And we can see that this desire is universal—even most evolutionists wish to transcend “survival of the fittest” in human society. Those who believe in anti-supernatural science most want to transcend superstition and get to real truth, to transcend wishful thinking and create a true utopia. Science fiction displays hope for a future, even when apocalyptic (which comes from the Greek word for “revelation”), because what good is a dystopia if not to serve as a warning—that we must aim higher. What is truly pessimistic is hated; even Nietzsche, considered the ultimate pessimist, hated pessimism and wanted to transcend it. But humans cannot transcend by their own power—man-made progress is an illusion—pure evolution would be a random walk to anything, probably simple triviality, a kind of uncontrolled fire—and reason itself, unaided by light from above, would also be entirely subservient to the wanderings of evolution, as it is tautological that only the fittest ideas, however irrational, survive. Yet our love of transcendence survives, our love of God. This itself I consider decisive evidence.

(But all this is only poetry.)

[westdesertsage]

See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

Matthew 18:10