We can either emphasize those aspects of our traditions, religious or secular, that speak of hatred, exclusion, and suspicion or work with those that stress the interdependence and equality of all human beings. The choice is yours. (22)
Karen Armstrong[T]he family is a school of compassion because it is here that we learn to live with other people. (68)
Karen Armstrongنسأل الله دائما أن يبارك امتنا،ويحمي ملكتنا،ويشفي أمراضنا،ويمنحنا طقسا جميلا يوم رحلتنا. نذكر الله بأنه خلق العالم وبأننا خطاءون تعساء، وكأنما قد نسى هو ذلك. يستشهد السياسيون بالله لتبرير سياساتهم، ويستخدم المدرسون اسمه للحفتظ على النظام بالفصول، والإرهابيون لارتكاب بشاعاتهم باسمه. نتوسل إلى الله أن يدعم جانبنا في الانتخابات أو الحرب، حتى على الرغم من أنه من المفترض أن أعداءنا هم أيضا أطفال الله وموضوع حبه ورعايته.
Karen ArmstrongSurely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden.
Karen ArmstrongReligion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.
Karen ArmstrongTags: practice ethics christianity religion theology
When the horror recedes and the world resumes its normal shape, you cannot forget it. You have seen what is "really" there, the empty horror that exists when the consoling illusion of our mundane experience is stripped away, so you can never respond to the world in quite the same way again."
from Coleridge: Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread
Tags: fear inspiration
Theology is-- or should be-- a species of poetry,which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way you might listen to a difficult piece of music... If you seize upon a poem and try to extort its meaning before you are ready, it remains opaque. If you bring your own personal agenda to bear upon it, the poem will close upon itself like a clam, because you have denied its unique and separate identity, its inviolate holiness.
Karen ArmstrongIf it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest.
Karen ArmstrongAuschwitz was a dark epiphany, providing us with a terrible vision of what life is like when all sense of the sacred is lost and the human being--whoever he or she may be--is no longer revered as an inviolable mystery.
Karen ArmstrongTags: inspirational history-of-thought
This was the scientific age, and people wanted to believe that their traditions were in line with the new era, but this was impossible if you thought that these myths should be understood literally. Hence the furor occasioned by The Origin of Species, published by Charles Darwin. The book was not intended as an attack on religion, but was a sober exploration of a scientific hypothesis. But because by this time people were reading the cosmogonies of Genesis as though they were factual, many Christians felt--and still feel--that the whole edifice of faith was in jeopardy. Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate; their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion.
Karen ArmstrongTags: science religion evolution creation
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