"Not long ago, in Kuntsevo, I suddenly crossed myself when I saw an oak. Evidently the source of prayer is not fear, but delight."
—
"It was forbidden for the bourgeoisie to use horses for removing snow from the streets. So the bourgeoisie, without a second thought, hired themselves a camel. And the camel hauled the snow. And the soldiers laughed out loud. (I saw this with my own eyes, on Arbat Street.)"
—
Marina Tsvetaeva, 1919-1920, in Poetry, March 2012, p. 555.
You should probably subscribe to this magazine. A student subscription is $17.50 USD and…well…you get lots and lots of poetry.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/
"The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges…"
— Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Chapter 28.
"Don’t doubt in the dark what you heard in the light."
"It is my conviction that the combination of these principles—voluntaryism, pluralism, protestantism, and moralism—is what makes it perfectly possible for an American to shift his affiliation from church to church with every shift in his economic or social status or with every move from neighborhood to neighborhood or town to town, and still be regarded as a profoundly religious person if he leads a reasonably moral life; that is, if he restricts his acquisitiveness to conventional business channels, marries his wives _seriatim_ rather than simultaneously, participates in some sort of social uplift movement, and, except when driving his car, keeps within the limits of the law."
— from “What’s American About American Jewry?” by Joseph Blau, published in Judaism (Summer 1958)
"The theological task, therefore, is to integrate the present account of human agency within a comprehensive account of Christian belief and practice. It is false to say that progressive voices have not attempted to do just this. It would also be false to say that more traditional voices have not sought to bring the changes in moral practice now common in the West under the scrutiny of such an account. The problem is that progressives have made the connection by reducing Christian belief to rather vacuous account of divine and human love; and traditionalists have, as it were, “majored” in dogmatic assertions while remaining unaware of the moral gains that have come with our present map of the self."
— A remarkable article by Rev. Dr. Philip Turner, “The Achilles Heel of Anglicanism (in North America and the United Kingdom).” It is so much better than it sounds. In fact, it is as good as anything I’ve read at proposing a programmatic agenda for the task of ecclesial theology in the 21st century.
