Thrive

Sin is like gravity

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To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just. Sin as little as possible — that is the law of mankind. Not to sin at all is the dream of the angel. All earthly things are subject to sin. Sin is like gravity.”

— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

(via madamescherzo)

It’s just a stupid genetic lottery

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Of course. I always have (guilt). The only reason I’m not where they are is just pure luck, it’s just a stupid genetic lottery. It’s an unmerited gift to have this life. My books became successful way beyond any reasonable expectation and were about those people on the streets. I felt that in some way I had profited from their wretchedness.

~ Khaled Hosseini, author of “The Kite Runner”, on his success while his countrymen are suffering

  • Source The New York Times

Costly grace. The door at which man must knock.

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Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow- It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You flip to the other side of nothing, where you discover everyone is waiting

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“It’s very important to experience the complete negation of yourself which brings you to the other side of nothing. You go to the other side of nothing and you are held by the hand of the absolute. You see yourself as the absolute so you have no more insistence of self. You can speak of the self as no self when you sit in the absolute. Your sitting still is like a person who just shot an arrow. A moment later the result is there. What you know, the only thing you know is the sense that the arrow is moving all right. It has left your realm but you sense it is running well. The stillness in sitting is like that. You flip to the other side of nothing, where you discover everyone is waiting for you already.”

- Kobun Chino