Quinn Quote Saturday

"Every creature born in the biological community of the earth belongs to that community. Nothing lives in isolation from the rest; nothing can live in isolation from the rest. Nothing lives only in itself, needing nothing from the community. Nothing lives only for itself, owing nothing to the community. Nothing is untouchable or untouched.
"Every life in the community is owed to the community--and is paid back to the community in death.
"The community is a web of life, and every strand of the web is a path to all the other strands. Nothing is exempt. Nothing is special. Nothing lives on a strand by itself, unconnected to the rest. Nothing is wasted. Everything that lives is food for another."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.23, The Book of the Damned

Give up Hope

"Give up hope; you don't need hope."--James Hillman

Quinn Quote Saturday

"We've got to find our way back into the community[of life]. We've got to stop living like outlaws. When we begin to do that--when we begin to acknowledge that the world needs us and that we belong to it, not it to us--I think our feelings of desperate loneliness and neediness will begin to evaporate, all by themselves."--Providence

The Clock in the Classroom

I've always found this quote out of Derrick Jensen's Walking on Water; to be mostly true:

"The most important piece of technology in any classroom is the second hand of the clock. The purpose is to teach millions of students the identical prayer: Please God, make it move faster."--Page 15

Church, Monotheism, Salvation and Welcome the the Machine

Pulled Derrick Jensen's Welcome to the Machine off the shelf this morning. I'm still thinking about the affects of monotheism on our psyches and the Christian fundamentalists I was listening to on the mail route last week. These two quotes will be useful to me some day, I think.

"The policy of the Catholic Church has been and continues to be Nulla salus extra ecclesium, which means 'Outside the Church there is no salvation.' This statement manifests not only the eradication of diversity that characterizes our culture but also inadvertently suggests the misery our culture leads to: outside this oppressive culture there is no need for salvation."[Pg.85, Welcome to the Machine]

"When those in power say that outside the Church there can be no salvation, they are lying. What they are really saying is that you better not escape, because if you are outside of this Church, your continued existence (and happiness) will shake their belief in the notion that the Church is good for them. Thus the one who can be saved only if you remain in the Church is the Church itself. If you leave, it ceases to be the arbiter of all meaning and the source of salvation. The salvation of the Church requires not only your belief and participation, but if you leave it requires your death, and beyond that, your annihilation. In industry, science, religion, and other institutions, diversity must be eliminated.[Pg.85, Welcome to the Machine]

Watch Ripken Hitting Daddy

The first thing my son (He's 2 1/2 yrs. old) said to me this morning was, "watch Ripken hitting." I'm guessing he's watched this video close to a 100 times already. It's almost a daily occurance. I've got three videos put out by the Ripkens. One on hitting and the other two are on pitching and defense. He only watches the hitting video.

He shouldn't need much hitting instruction in years to come.

Quinn Quote Saturday

"The God of revealed religions - and by this I mean religions like yours...is a profoundly inarticulate God. No matter how many times he tries, he can't make himself clearly or completely understood. He speaks for centuries to the Jews but fails to make himself understood. At last he sends his only-begotten son, and his son can't seem to do any better. Jesus might have sat himself down with a scribe and dictated the answers to ever conceivable theological question in aboslutely unequivocal terms, but he chose not to, leaving subsequent generations to settle what Jesus had in mind with pogroms, purges, persecutions, wars, the burning stake, and the rack. Having failed through Jesus, God next tried to make himself understood through Muhammad, with limited success, as always. After a thousand years of silence he tried again with Joseph Smith, with no better results. Averaging it out, all God has been able to tell us for sure is that we should do unto others as we'd have them do unto us. What's that - a dozen words? Not much to show for five thousand years of work, and we probably could have figured out that much for ourselves anyways. To be honest, I'd be embarrassed to be associated with a god as incompetent as that." - [Pg.135, The Story of B]

Monotheism and the Center of the Psyche

"Monotheism is connected with the idea that there is a center in the psyche. Which, I think, is the most dangerous implication of monotheism."-Robert Bly

More on Christianity

I posted this on Facebook this morning. It's similar to yesterday's subject.

Lately I've found myself involved in conversations with a few Little League parents and grandparents talking about God and Christianity, so it was nice to run across this blog post. Even though I don't consider myself a Christian by any means (Yesterday I mentioned to Annie that if I attended church it would be an act of self-betrayal), I'm interested in the issue and what folks have to say about it.

Conversations with Christians

The past few weeks I've been involved in some conversations with some folks that take their Christian faith pretty seriously. The conversations went well. I didn't feel like they were trying to convert me or tried to convey any sense of moral superiority. But upon reflection I'm reminded of this quote by Robert Bly in his book titled: A Little Book On The Human Shadow.

"What did [William] Blake say?-'No person who is not an artist can be a Christian.' He means that a person who refuses to approach his own life actively, using language, music, sculpture, painting, or drawing is a caterpillar dressed in Christian clothes, not a human being."[Robert Bly, Pg.43]

Quinn Quote Saturday

"The fundamental...delusion is that humanity itself was designed - and therefore destined - to become us. This is a twin of the idea that the entire universe was created in order to produce this planet. We would smile patronizingly if the Gebusi (A tribe in Australia) boasted that humanity was divinely destined to become Gebusi, but we're perfectly satisfied that humanity was divinely destined to become us." - page 129, The Story of B

Hayhurst on Hitters and Pitchers

Well, it's been a couple of days since I have posted. I'm giving up on my goal of posting once a day. With how busy my life has gotten with Little League baseball, postal work, and the responsibilites that come with being a dad I don't have much time to post. I usually post early in the morning, but like I said in a previous post I would rather leave the computer off and use that time to write long hand or read a book. I should be able to post every couple of days, though.

I spent the past couple of mornings reading Dirk Hayhurst's Out Of My League. I ran across this quote this morning. But before I post the quote here is what I just noticed Bob Costas had to say about the book: "Dirk Hayhurst writes about baseball in a unique way. Observant, insightful, human, and hilarious." I'd agree. I've really enjoyed the book so far.

"Hitters are stupid. If they weren't, they'd be pitchers. No one in their right mind would pick the side of the game that considers three out of ten good unless they're slightly unhinged."[Pg. 47, Out Of My League]

Blake Quote

“As a man is, so he sees"-William Blake

Programs

"Our culture's river of vision is carrying us toward catastrophe. Sticks planted in the mud may impede its flow very slightly, but we don't need to impede its flow, we need to divert it into an entirely new channel. If our culture's river of vision ever begins to carry us away from catastrophe and into a sustainable future, then programs will be superfluous. When the river's flowing where you want it to flow, you don't plant sticks to impede it." --Daniel Quinn out of Beyo​nd Civilization