Some thoughts: (perhaps worth pondering)
Personal Aphorisms
People are not always evil; they are often misguided or jaded or confuse or misapprehensive or imperceptive or insensitive or prejudiced. They are responsible for their human weaknesses but they are not inheritently evil. Often they prefer personal comfort to disruptive involvement but they are not evil.
What is a saint? People who respond to God’s call more fully, more energetically more sensitively than others.
God is constantly calling us but we hear and follow other calls; God’s call is soft and persuasive. other calls are loud and forceful.
All the goodness God pours into the world, all the goodness the saints offer us are conditioned by our freedom to refuse, to choose a lesser good or even an evil eg God and the saints offer us the power to create peace but we are free to choose vindictiveness or warfare instead.
Courage is not standing up for your convictions. Courage is taking your convictions into the face of opposition. Anyone can stand up and salute the flag. Few are the number of courageous citizens who will live by the principle that that flag symbolizes especially when those principles oppose the expediencies of our government.
Many have the courage of their prejudices but not of their convictions. To have convictions they must think things through. Maintaining prejudices requires only that they are through with any thinking at all.
The problem with courage is not the lack of backbone but having too much backbone which ends up being stubbornness. Courage to be effective must be flexible enough to bend. Stubbornness can be backbreaking.
Personal Aphorisms
People are not always evil; they are often misguided or jaded or confuse or misapprehensive or imperceptive or insensitive or prejudiced. They are responsible for their human weaknesses but they are not inheritently evil. Often they prefer personal comfort to disruptive involvement but they are not evil.
What is a saint? People who respond to God’s call more fully, more energetically more sensitively than others.
God is constantly calling us but we hear and follow other calls; God’s call is soft and persuasive. other calls are loud and forceful.
All the goodness God pours into the world, all the goodness the saints offer us are conditioned by our freedom to refuse, to choose a lesser good or even an evil eg God and the saints offer us the power to create peace but we are free to choose vindictiveness or warfare instead.
Courage is not standing up for your convictions. Courage is taking your convictions into the face of opposition. Anyone can stand up and salute the flag. Few are the number of courageous citizens who will live by the principle that that flag symbolizes especially when those principles oppose the expediencies of our government.
Many have the courage of their prejudices but not of their convictions. To have convictions they must think things through. Maintaining prejudices requires only that they are through with any thinking at all.
The problem with courage is not the lack of backbone but having too much backbone which ends up being stubbornness. Courage to be effective must be flexible enough to bend. Stubbornness can be backbreaking.
posted by The Ronald | 9:56 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Ron:
I loved the aphorisms, especially the last one....I like to refer to myself as having a backbone, but I didn't think that it could be stubbornism...and you're right, it can be backbreaking.
Mary
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