“Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.”
“If atheism is a religion then ‘not collecting stamps’ is a hobby…” – Anon
[hattip to Tom Coates @ Plasticbag]
I’m currently studying for my “Learners and Learning: Individuals” module – looking particularly at identity in adolescence. It’s interesting to overlay the theories of Erikson and others to my personal development and see how well they fit. The following quote in particular struck me as I applied it to my life.
“Intimacy is the ability to fuse your identity with somebody else’s without fear that you’re going to lose something yourself.” -Erik Erikson
I had been single for quite some time, but then my “someone special” entered into my life, and we’re currently two months away from our wedding. For both of us it’s been an amazing six months so far and quite a learning curve, but I think we agree that it’s come just at the right time for both of us – perhaps because we’re now secure enough in who we are to “fuse” with someone else without fear.
Anyway, that’s enough procrastinating for one day, back to the books…
“The opaque glance and the pimples. The fancy new nakedness they’re all dressed up in with no place to go. The eyes full of secrets they have a strong hunch everybody is on to. The shadowed brow. Being not quite a child and not quite a grown-up either is hard word, and they look it. Living in two worlds at once is no picnic.”Frederick Buechner – Whistling in the Dark
“Adolescence is…a stage between infancy and adultery.”
Abrose Bierce – Devil’s Dictionary
“Adults tend to treat adolescents as ‘big kids’ or ‘little adults’. They are neither. Yes they are both. Adults must work to respect and honour the unique challenges and opportunities of this age ‘between the times’.”
Richard Dunn – Putting Youth Ministry in Perspective
“Jesus was once a teenager, but he was never an adolescent.”
Donald Joy
From Urban Dictionary: connectile dysfunction
Word of the day…
Definition:
- The inability to gain or maintain an internet connection.
- The inability to print, email, or get to the internet.
Usage:
“My computer had connectile dysfunction (CD) yesterday, so I couldn’t check my email.“
Anyone who has anything to do with TalkTalk will know exactly what this is like…
“The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.”
– John Scully –
In other words:
“[I] skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”
– Wayne Gretzky –
We are apt to forget the mystic supernatural touch of God which comes with his call. If a man can tell you how he got the call of God and all about it, it is questionable whether he ever had the call. A call to be a professional man may come in that explicit way, but the call of God is much more supernatural. The realisation of the call of God in a man’s life may come with a sudden thunder clap or by a gradual dawning, but in whatever way it comes, it comes with the under-current of the supernatural, almost the uncanny. It is always accompanied with a glow – something that cannot be put into words. We need to keep the atmosphere of our mind prepared by the Holy Spirit lest we forget the surprise of the touch of God on our lives.
Oswald Chambers
The latest issue of NextWave features a great article entitled “a Theology of Marriage and Divorce”. Here are a couple of excerpts which particularly resonated with me:
From the Creation account we also learn that human beings are created in the image of God. Trinitarian theology teaches us about perichoresis – the divine dance in which the Creator, Redeemer and Comforter are both three and one. Each one is distinct in personality and cannot be subsumed into a single identity. And yet their unity is so complete that Christians are monotheists. We worship one God – a unified, three-person God.
“The two shall become one flesh.” Scripture’s description of marriage also describes a tension – a dance between unity and individuality within marriage. There are two people with distinct personalities, gifts, names, and bodies. And yet marriage makes them one – an unbroken mysterious unity that transcends their individuality without obliterating it. [...] As fallen ones, we all struggle with this tension between unity and individuality, between freedom and control, and between self-sacrifice and self-centeredness.
and
Marriage is a covenant relationship – the most sacred of vows that a human being can make. In the Old Testament, making a covenant involved sacrificing an animal, cutting it into two pieces, and then walking between the halves of the animal. If one party broke the covenant, they were agreeing to share the fate of the animal. Obviously, such covenants were not entered into lightly and were broken only with disastrous consequences. [...] Marriage is also a covenant relationship and in our culture we have no context for understanding the gravity of such a commitment. But scripture teaches us that there is a mysterious revelation of Christ’s relationship to his Church within the relationship between a married couple. They are both covenantal relationships.
If you asked twenty good men what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply ‘Unselfishness’. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, ‘Love’. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philosophical importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love.
C.S. Lewis – The Weight Of Glory
