Off I go.
9 years ago
It occurred to me during the reading/hearing of the Epistle (Efesios 4:7-8, 11-16) yesterday at the Hispanic Mass that the Holy Scriptures of the Universal [to use the Latin because everyone in the US freaks if one uses the Greek "katholicos"] Church are the Bath-qol [the "daughter of the Voice" or as translated in the Greek [to English] scriptures, the "echo" of of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Thus, it is when in the hearing of the words, the logoi, the Qol, the audible Voice the Spirit within us speaks to oneself and says "AMEN! This is true, the Voice of God."
It is common for those who argue for and against the existence of God to assume that the word God is used by believers to refer to something that we can point toward, distance ourselves from, and dispassionately reflect upon. However, one can reject this idea of God as nothing but a form of idolatry . . . This approach questions any expression that would reduce God to the realm of objects. Here no theistic rendering of God is allowed to lay claim to God, for God dwells above and beyond all names. God is rather approached as the ineffable source that is received but never conceived. God is thus not approached as an object, but rather encountered as an absolute subject who transforms our relationship with all objects. Just as the light in the room cannot be seen but rather allows us to see, so God is not directly experienced but rather is the name we give to a whole new way of experiencing . . . Hence, religious experience is not really experience as such but the opening into a different way of experiencing.
— Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic and
Other Impossible Tales http://anamchara.com/
He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection
I alone am real, Arjuna, looking out, amused, from deep within the eyes of every creature. I am the object of all knowledge, father and mother of the world, the source of all things. I am the goal, the root, the witness, home and refuge, dearest friend, creation and annihilation, everlasting seed and treasure.
I am the radiance of the sun, I open or withhold the rain clouds, I am immortality and death, am being and non being.
I am the Self, Arjuna, seated in the heart of every creature. I am the origin, the middle, and the end that all must come to.
I am always with all beings; I abandon no one. And however great your inner darkness, you are never separate from me. Let your thoughts flow past you calmly; keep me near at every moment; trust me with your life, because I am you, more than you yourself are. ---Bhagavad-gita