An endless living world If there is a heaven, and I am allowed entrance, I will ask for no more than an endless living world to walk through and explore. Michael R. Canfield, Field Notes on Science and Nature learningnaturereligionwalking
To find God in the seminary If he were to tire of the Andalusian fields, he could sell his sheep and go to sea. By the time he had had enough of the sea, he would already have known other cities, other women, and other chances to be happy. I couldn't have found God in the seminary, he thought, as he looked at the sunrise. Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist religion
As a kind of gateway Historically, Japan's shrines have been built in order to worship the gods who live in the sacred mountains or seas; They don't reside in the shrine itself, but in the space beyond it. This belief that the spirits and deities exist beyond the confines of the shrine, and that the shrine itself acts not as a centre, but as a kind of gateway, is very different to the grand, imposing churches and cathedrals of Christianity. The majority of shrines are not found in the mountains or in the middle of the fields, therefore, but at the borders of mountain villages – which is to say, at what is seen as the edge of the mountains. The tori gate, marking the entrance to a shrine, indicates that there are gods on the other side of it. Kengo Kuma, My Life as an Architect in Tokyo An edge is an interfacePaths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks religionedges
The neon god they made And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel, The Sound Of Silence religionenergy
Everybody worships Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. David Foster Wallace, This is Water City messages religion
Dwelling in ritual Even a dwelling is a device that generates a distinct pattern of daily activities and their relationships. Some buildings are explicitly built for ritual, but the repetition of any activity, either mundane or religious, tends to ritualize them, and by facilitating this, an architectural structure can turn gradually – sometimes even unnoticeably – into an instrument of ritual. Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture White cloth ritualpatternsreligion
Who walks beside you? Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land religionwalking
Immer wieder My attitude toward Alexander’s teachings prior to experiencing the places and spaces realized in his practice was akin to what Alan Watts said about certain teachings in The Bible: Sometimes, as St. Paul pointed out, commandments are not given in the expectation that they will be obeyed, but in the expectation that they will reveal something to those who hear them. Today, my answer is unequivocal. My interpretive lens: literal. Time and again, across cultures and continents and islands and oceans, in five different places now I’ve examined the evidence, and am persuaded. Nicht nur einmal: immer wieder. Dan Klyn, Einmal Ist Keinmal blog.usejournal.com religionteaching
The Mind of the Maker A Book by Dorothy Sayers en.wikipedia.org Looking at man, [the author of Genesis] sees in him something essentially divine, but when we turn back to see what he says about the original upon which the “image” of God was modelled, we find only the single assertion, “God created”. The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things. Only in terms of other thingsI mix it with two in my thoughtTowards a synthesis of experienceAnd these three are one"The right phrase"+28 More religion
Narcissus and Goldmund A Novel by Herman Hesse www.goodreads.com DualityFear of deathPain and joySuddenly the letter has a tailAll that is beautiful and lovely My own beauty reflected religionlovelife
the speed of God An Article by Alan Jacobs blog.ayjay.org [Andy Crouch] quotes the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama saying that “the speed of God” is three miles an hour because that was the speed at which Jesus moved through his world. So maybe, and I think this is one of the chief burdens of Andy’s book, what makes the most sense for us is to try whenever possible to move at the speed of God – and in that way refuse the offer of superpowers. Of course, this dovetails with a lot of things people have been writing lately about slowness, but what I like about Andy’s book is that it specifies why we can find ourselves responding so warmly to the possibility of slowness. What happens when we seek superpowers, and especially super-speed, is the sacrifice of what I want to call our proper powers – the powers through the exercise of which we (heart-soul-mind-strength) flourish in love. The brain is wider than the sky religionloveeuphonyslowness
Ensuring Excellence An Article by Marty Cagan www.svpg.com …in so many of the best product companies there is an additional dimension that goes beyond individual empowered product teams, and even goes beyond achieving business results. It has to do with ensuring a level of what I’ll refer to here as “excellence” although that is clearly a very ambiguous term. Over the years, this concept has been referred to by many different names, always necessarily vague, but all striving to convey the same thing: “desirability,” “aha moments,” “wow factor,” “magic experiences,” or “customer delight,” to list just a few. The concept is that an effective product that achieves results is critical, but sometimes we want to go even beyond that, to provide something special. Maybe it’s because we believe this is needed to achieve the necessary value. Maybe it’s because the company has built its brand on inspiring customers. Often this dimension shows up most clearly in product design, where functional, usable but uninspiring designs can often achieve our business results, but great design can propel us into this realm of the inspiring. Do they really need it? qualitycraftproductssoftware
Do they really need it? Does Google really need playful doodles to deliver the value they consistently provide in search results? Does Stripe really need to spend so much energy on the design of its site and SDK’s, which after all, are primarily for the developers that use their API’s? Does Apple really need to sweat the literally thousands of very subtle and often not consciously noticed interactions on its devices? On Taste