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Showing posts with label Bob Seal cartoons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bob Seal cartoons. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Monday, August 6, 2012
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Jan. Friends: Silence
I am looking forward to going on retreat to silent Lebh Shomea in Sarita, TX. I will drive there on Friday (from Corpus Christi).
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Dualistic Cartoon!
Richard Rohr writes in The Naked Now:
"With dualistic minds it is always one or the other--it can never be both. The result is that we still think of ourselves as mere humans trying desperately to become 'spiritual,' when the Christian revelation was precisely that you are already spiritual ('in God'), and your difficult but necessary task is to learn how to become human. Jesus came to model the full integration for us and, in effect, told us that Divinity looked just like him--while he looked ordinarily human to everybody!
"It is in our humanity that we are still so wounded, so needy, so unloving, so self-hating, and so in need of enlightenment. We seem to have spawned centuries of people trying to be spiritual and religious, whereas our record on basic humanness is rather pitiful." (69)
Rohr, Richard. The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. NY: Crossroad Publishing, 2009.
The troubled mind cannot decide between "good/bad" or "right/wrong." That's how we automatically think in dualistic terms. It is much harder to observe non-judgmentally, as the dog is thinking in the cartoon.
"With dualistic minds it is always one or the other--it can never be both. The result is that we still think of ourselves as mere humans trying desperately to become 'spiritual,' when the Christian revelation was precisely that you are already spiritual ('in God'), and your difficult but necessary task is to learn how to become human. Jesus came to model the full integration for us and, in effect, told us that Divinity looked just like him--while he looked ordinarily human to everybody!
"It is in our humanity that we are still so wounded, so needy, so unloving, so self-hating, and so in need of enlightenment. We seem to have spawned centuries of people trying to be spiritual and religious, whereas our record on basic humanness is rather pitiful." (69)
Rohr, Richard. The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. NY: Crossroad Publishing, 2009.
The troubled mind cannot decide between "good/bad" or "right/wrong." That's how we automatically think in dualistic terms. It is much harder to observe non-judgmentally, as the dog is thinking in the cartoon.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Doubt
Doubt has come to mind, which caused me to remember Frederick Buechner's writings on doubt. I always loved him saying, "Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith." I think that's true, though doubts are sometimes even more uncomfortable than that.
I think doubt is part of faith. Faith doesn't grow unless there are doubts. I still have them and can if I stay in my head intellectualizing; but in my heart, I know there is God. It is a knowing beyond explanation and makes my life better. The title of my blog tells how I feel regarding all this--"yearning for God." (If you want to read my faith story, go here.)
So here are Buechner's words about doubt from his collection of readings, Beyond Words:
"Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.
"There are two principal kinds of doubt, one of the head and the other of the stomach.
"In my head there is almost nothing I can't doubt when the fit is upon me--the divinity of Christ, the efficacy of the sacraments, the significance of the church, the existence of God. But even when I am at my most skeptical, I go on with my life as though untoward has happened.
"I have never experienced stomach doubt, but I think Jesus did. When he cried, 'My God, my God, why has though forsaken me!' I don't think he was raising a theological issue any more than he was quoting Psalm 22. I think he had looked into the abyss itself and found there a darkness that spiritually, viscerally, totally engulfed him. I think God allows that kind of darkness to happen only to God's saints. The rest of us aren't up to doubting that way--or maybe believing that way either.
"When our faith is strongest, we believe with our hearts as well as with our heads, but only at a few rare moments, I think, do we feel in our stomachs what it must be like to be engulfed by light." (85-86)
Buechener, Frederick. Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004.
I love the way he expresses himself. All of the above tells about doubts I've had in the past and which I'll probably have in the future, too. Still, I go on "walking the walk" with friends and rediscovering the Holy is HERE more often than not.
I think doubt is part of faith. Faith doesn't grow unless there are doubts. I still have them and can if I stay in my head intellectualizing; but in my heart, I know there is God. It is a knowing beyond explanation and makes my life better. The title of my blog tells how I feel regarding all this--"yearning for God." (If you want to read my faith story, go here.)So here are Buechner's words about doubt from his collection of readings, Beyond Words:
"Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.
"There are two principal kinds of doubt, one of the head and the other of the stomach.
"In my head there is almost nothing I can't doubt when the fit is upon me--the divinity of Christ, the efficacy of the sacraments, the significance of the church, the existence of God. But even when I am at my most skeptical, I go on with my life as though untoward has happened.
"I have never experienced stomach doubt, but I think Jesus did. When he cried, 'My God, my God, why has though forsaken me!' I don't think he was raising a theological issue any more than he was quoting Psalm 22. I think he had looked into the abyss itself and found there a darkness that spiritually, viscerally, totally engulfed him. I think God allows that kind of darkness to happen only to God's saints. The rest of us aren't up to doubting that way--or maybe believing that way either.
"When our faith is strongest, we believe with our hearts as well as with our heads, but only at a few rare moments, I think, do we feel in our stomachs what it must be like to be engulfed by light." (85-86)
Buechener, Frederick. Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004.
I love the way he expresses himself. All of the above tells about doubts I've had in the past and which I'll probably have in the future, too. Still, I go on "walking the walk" with friends and rediscovering the Holy is HERE more often than not.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Creativity or not?
I remember how excited I was to learn about perspective in drawing in fourth grade (when I was in third grade in a combination 3/4 class, but in reality I skipped fourth grade). That's probably the last time I was given any form of an art lesson. Sometime in the intervening years, I came to believe that I was (and am) totally uncreative.
In the past few years people have come into my life who have been gently encouraging me to try something in art, though I have not. The same friend who recommended the book Autumn Gospel gave me a book on creativity several years ago, which I keep putting off for a "better time": The Creativity Book: A Year's Worth of Inspiration and Guidance. MJF said that that book helped her to find her own creativity. Just recently, she suggested that she could show me what she knows about photography. . . .
Today at our local HEB supermarket, I met an Emmaus Walk friend from years ago. We barely recognized each other, since both of us have whiter hair now. She retired since I last saw her and is taking care of her ill daughter and 6-year-old grandson. In her spare time she is taking a watercolor class at the local community college. That interested me, and then she told me she had to take many elementary courses before this one--that were required first. And she told me that the art community at the junior college is nurturing and caring. WOW--sounds wonderful! She also told me that she needed courses with deadlines so she'd do the projects, and that is how I work best.
And friend TK has made a place for me at her art table to help me explore art. She paints and sculpts. She is actually ready for me to try.
Looking at the daffodil Ruth drew and posted at her blog Ruth's Visions and Revisions, I was connected with her creative drive in work (writing) and in her personal life (The Artist's Way) to see that it might also be a possibility for me. Doxy wrote in the comments that her grandfather always promised "to do that" when he retired, but then was unable to because he had dementia. Doesn't this somehow speak about living in the present moment??
So maybe I need to take a hint and accept one of these invitations. It's a little scary, as I feel totally inept. . . .and need to write those papers I mention in my profile. . . . But this is more of a possibility than I thought before. . . .
by Bob Seal
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Monday, July 16, 2007
![[labels_72.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF7scIG4UE6bN0qKJ_JbgPtlEHUhGHCGTsXKUtuJEDmr4cPk1JfUG_kWTK8a-IEoKW8RaonJ6stINIsadHebFXHZt4mRR-GkNpp1SjKvJKE_v1G_fxCJDRLpb0NuGnpQAfOmQWqJ_DYKA/s1600/labels_72.jpg)
Sunday, July 8, 2007
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