diff --git a/diary/2022-03-11.html b/diary/2022-03-11.html index 1e7b7cbe6..b96247f9f 100644 --- a/diary/2022-03-11.html +++ b/diary/2022-03-11.html @@ -38,7 +38,7 @@

The world has a false scale in which actions are weighed. A man is frequently considered good simply because he attends some house of worship regularly. Many attend such places for this consideration. I would rather do one good act tan go to church a lifetime without doing it, and would rather take the chance of the one act than all the professions in the world. Goodness is an active principle. It is simply acting up to thy own highest idea of right. Goodness is the fruit of the action. (p. 166)

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The critical nature of these thoughts towards Charles’s faith from birth are echoed by his sister and some other Friends back at home, where they discuss just what action means in the context of a war that many view as in just cause. What is a ‘just war’ aside, this is a conversation that continues within Quakerism today (I have ✨stories✨). Actions and deeds versus profession of faith come into conflict:

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The critical nature of these thoughts towards Charles’s faith from birth are echoed by his sister and some other Friends back at home, where they discuss just what action means in the context of a war that many view as in just cause. What is a ‘just war’ aside, this is a conversation that continues within Quakerism today. Actions and deeds versus profession of faith come into conflict:

All we do to others is done in realty unto ourselves. For every violation of his own inward light of truth man must suffer, and he will soon cease to kindle fires which burn only himself.

Each man is his own scale weighed, and the lean of the scale is his own ray of light. (p. 166)

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  • The field zoomed in, showing the vague shapes of human forms, armed, but only just barely discernible.

    • The man’s expression, though! It’s…there’s this spot that’s somewhere between terror and excitement where ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ and ‘angry’ and ‘understanding’ drop away and there’s just an ineffable sense of one’s own mortality. Duty is too abstract a concept to hold in the mind. And beneath that, “There is a holy mind that is above fear.”

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    Quakers, as…well, we’ll say ‘gently lapsed charismatics’, are no strangers to gnostic concepts of the worldly in contrast to the spiritual. It’s not uncommon in Great Awakening thought. It’s just that, in that moment, that spiritual side of you gets kicked back a half a pace. There is a holy mind that is above fear, but the weird part is that the disconnect remains.

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    Quakers, as…well, we’ll say gentle (or gently lapsed) charismatics, are no strangers to gnostic concepts of the worldly in contrast to the spiritual. It’s not uncommon in Great Awakening thought. It’s just that, in that moment, that spiritual side of you gets kicked back a half a pace. There is a holy mind that is above fear, but the weird part is that the disconnect remains.

    I’m terrified for my cat and the lingering grief I mooshed awkwardly into “Seasons”. That part of me that engages with expectant silence is inaccessible. But it’s still there.

    There is a holy mind that is above fear.

    Holy mind

    Anyway, all that to say that I really liked the book. I picked it in particular as I wanted something that explored that disconnect between faith and reality. With my stated goal of an essay exploring a hypothetical situation where core aspects of belief are obviated by one’s living situation, finding something that introduces internal conflicts felt particularly applicable. It gave me a lot of ideas for how to approach the subject in a way that makes for not only interesting reading rather than a statement of facts or simple set of arguments — it is supposed to be a creative essay, after all. Unfortunately, I read it rather late in the month and didn’t have time for any rewrites, so there’s a tonal shift in the essay itself I’m not all that happy with. Ah well, the same was true with “Seasons” and the consistency of the writing/voice throughout, so I’m looking forward to doing some revising down the road.