CowPi Journal

Heard this song at the end of the episode “Custody” in the TV show Flash Point. (sound clip or video)

You get lost in pursuit of glory
We find ourselves locked in denial
Ego has no intermission
When it headlines every night, yeah

Those mistakes you made don’t make you half a man
There is weakness where there is pride
A broken heart don’t mean a broken girl within
It’s not a sin to start again

There is peace and forgiveness
Sometimes honor and lie, yeah
The only crime is indifference
No regret as long as you tried

But those mistakes you made don’t make you half a man
There is weakness where there is pride
A broken heart don’t mean a broken girl within
It’s not a sin to start again

whooooo, whooooo…

But those mistakes you made don’t make you half a man
There is weakness when there is pride, ooo
A broken heart don’t mean a broken girl within
It’s not, it’s not, it’s not a sin to start again

— Illiyun

“Theology” is not an end in itself. It is always but a way. Theology, and even the “dogmas,” present no more than an “intellectual contour” of the revealed truth, and a “noetic” testimony to it. Only in the act of faith is this “contour” filled with content. Christological formulas are fully meaningful only for those who have encountered the Living Christ, and have received and acknowledged Him as God and Saviour, and are dwelling by faith in Him, in His body, the Church. In this sense, theology is never a self-explanatory discipline. It is constantly appealing to the vision of faith. “What we have seen and have heard we announce to you.” Apart from this “announcement” theological formulas are empty and of no consequence. For the same reason these formulas can never be taken “abstractly,” that is, out of total context of belief. It is misleading to single out particular statements from the Fathers and to detach them from the total perspective in which they have actually been uttered, just as it is misleading to manipulate with detached quotations from the Scripture. It is a dangerous habit “to quote” the Fathers, that is, their isolated sayings and phrases, outside of that concrete setting in which only they have their full and proper meaning and are truly alive. “To follow” the Fathers does not mean just “to quote” them. “To follow” the Fathers means to acquire their “mind,” their phronema.

— Fr. Georges Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition, p. 109 (via)

Jesus knew human nature as we cannot know it. He knew its baseness, as we even do not know it; he knew its frailty, its inconsistency. Yet, knowing it, he dared to say to us: “Follow me.” How well he thought of us, how nobly he judged us who said to us, “Come where I go, follow me to the heights of self-sacrifice that I have climbed.” He would not have said it unless he meant it, unless he knew that we could. He was no dreamer. He knew mankind. He knew the shallowness of those who then followed him and of those who would follow him, but he knew also their depth, their greatness. And knowing this he calls all of us to follow him.

— Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P. (via)

What we choose to fight is so tiny…
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from the poem “The Watching Man”