Quotes for Beauty

 We have so many PDF  readings moving forward I want to keep significant quotes here:

****I will be using Take me Back to Eden or Rain for my Beauty Essay. Looking at them as theopoetics written by Vessel for/about Sleep. 

Bednarowski - Theological Creativity and Religious Symbols

• I am convinced that the symbols of our various religious traditions are more powerful in their ongoing meanings than we realize - and that we ourselves do a disservice in underestimating that power. Their meanings are subject to change of course, in form and emphasis - how could it be otherwise? - but not, in my opinion, to destruction or irrelevance. (32)
• And hope, I am convinced, is a communal project; we elicit it in each other, we share it with each other, and we find it in many places in the culture. (32)
• It is one of the gifts of theological creativity, by which I mean the capacity, the commitment, the desire to respond and commit to religious symbols - to take responsibility for them in ways that are both innovative and conserving - to see what we can make of them that is new, but not so totally new that they no longer speak to the communities of people to whom they have been entrusted. We are obligated to cultivate the courage to let those symbols make their way into the world and learn how to recognize their evocative power when we encounter them in startingly new ways (32)
• And the obvious finally dawned on me - that to take something very, very, seriously, no matter how much change one advocates, to "save" it, to continue its healing - certainly to demonstrate its power and persistence. (34)
• Since my early days as an English Major, I have seen poetry and fiction as among the great preservers of religious language and symbols and among the most compelling  sources of theological creativity. (36)
• We worry that pluralism will lead to relativism - an inability or an unwillingness to value any one tradition over another - but I think we underestimate the formidable foundational powers of the symbols that have shaped us - the history and depth of response we bring to them. (40)

Tillich - Art and Ultimate Reality

 First, it is obvious that is something expresses something else—as, for instance, language expresses thought —they are not the same. There is a gap between that which expresses and that which is expressed. But there is also a  point of identity between them. It is the riddle and the depth of all expression that it both reveals and hides at the same time. And if we say that the universe is an expression of ultimate reality, we say that the universe and everything in it both reveals and hides ultimate reality. (2)

There are three ways in which man is able to experience and express ultimate reality in, through and above the reality he encounters. Two of these ways are indirect; one of them is direct. The two indirect ways of expressing ultimate reality are philosophy—more specifically, metaphysics—and art. They are indirect because it is their immediate intention to express the encountered reality in cognitive concepts or in esthetic images. (2)

But there is the third and direct way in which man discerns and receives ultimate reality. We call it religion—in the traditional sense of the word. Here ultimate reality becomes manifest through ecstatic experiences of a concrete-revelatory character and is expressed in symbols and myths (3)

Styles and Experiences:

The First type of religious experience, and also the most universal and fundamental one, is the sacramental. Here ultimate reality appears as the holy which is present in all kinds of objects, in things, persons, events. (4)

 This enables us to discover the first stylistic element which is effective in the experience of ultimate reality. It appears predominantly in what often has been called magic realism.  

 The religious danger of all sacramental religion is idolatry, the attempt to make a sacramentally consecrated reality into the divine itself 

 Related to the sacramental type of religion and at the same time radically going beyond it is the mystical type. Religious experience tries to reach ultimate reality without the mediation  of particular things in this religious type. (6) 

 It can undergo a transformation into a monistic mysticism of nature under the famous formula of the God of Nature. In it God is equated with nature—with the creative ground of nature which transcends every particular object. 

Correlate to this religious type is that stylistic element in which the particularity of things is dissolved into a visual continuum. This continuum is not a grey in grey; it has all the potentialities of particular beings within itself...It is a decisive element in the impressionist dissolution of particulars into a continuum of light and colors. Most radically it has been carried through in what is called today, non-objective painting. 

 Like mysticism  the prophetic-protesting type of religion goes beyond the sacramental basis of all religious life. Its pattern is the criticism of a demonically distorted sacramental system in the name of personal righteousness and social justice.  (7)

Holiness without justice is rejected....It is manifest as personal will, demanding, judging, punishing, promising. 

If we now ask what stylistic element in the visual arts corresponds to such an experience of ultimate reality, we must answer that it is "realism" both in its scientific-descriptive and in its ethical-critical form. After nature has been deprived of its numinous power, it is possible for it to become a matter of scientific analysis and technical management.  

The realistic element in the artistic styles seems far removed from expressing ultimate reality. It seems to hide it more than express it. But there is a way in which descriptive realism can mediate the experience of ultimate reality.  

The prophetic-critical type of religion has in itself the element of hope. This is the basis of its power. If the element of hope is separated from the realistic view of reality, a religious type appears which sees in the present the anticipation of future perfection.(8)

 The artistic style expressing it is usually called idealism, a word which is in such disrepute today that it is al most impossible to use.  

But more than in the other stylistic elements, the danger which threatens artistic idealism must be emphasized: confusing idealism with a superficially and sentimentally beautifying realism. This has happened on a large scale, especially in the realm of religious art, and is the reason for the disrepute into which idealism, both word and concept, has fallen. Genuine idealism shows the potentialities in the depths of a being or event, and brings them into existence as artistic images. Beautifying realism shows the actual existence of its object, but with dishonest, idealizing additions. 

 Now I come to my fifth and last stylistic element. The great reaction against both realism and idealism (except numinous realism) was the expressionistic movement. To which religious type is it correlated? Let me call it the ecstatic-spiritual type.  (9)

 It is marked by its dynamic character both in disruption and creation. It accepts the individual thing and person but goes beyond it. It is realistic and at the same time mystical. It criticizes and at the same time anticipates. It is restless, yet points to eternal rest. 

I believe the expressionist element is the artistic correlative to the ecstatic-spiritual type of religious experience. Ultimate reality appears "breaking the prison of our form," as a hymn about the Divine Spirit says. It breaks to pieces the surface of our own being and that of our world. This is the spiritual character of expressionism... 

If art expresses reality in images and religion expresses ultimate reality in symbols then religious art expresses religious symbols in artistic images (as philosophical concepts). The religious content, namely a particular and direct relation of man to ultimate reality, is first expressed in a religious symbol, and secondly, in the expression of this symbol in artistic images. (10)

Lecture:

• "What is theopoetics? Well, according to the society for arts, religion, and contemporary culture: theopoetics explores the intersection of religious reflection and spirituality with the imagination, embodiment, aesthetics, and the arts. (18:30)
• Theopoetics is not an alternative to theology - but a distinctive style of theologizing that views art, feeling, and the body as sources of theological construction. (18:36-18:50)
• Theopoetics literally means "God-Making". 
• Theopoetics is not simply a poetic expression of theological ideas. John Caputo makes this exact point in What to believe! I will quote him:'theopoetics does not mean a poetry that supplies the ornamentation of an already conceived theology. It is not a poetic flourish that decorates an already constituted system of theology, or something that adorns a finished theology. Theopoetics is instead an exercise of creative imagination. One that is constantly imagining the unconditional, envisioning things otherwise, attempting to forge ahead down unbeaten paths; to produce something new. To think what has never been and what may never be. The first, last, and only recourse when thinking has run up against the unprethinkable.'"  
• At the heart of theopoetics is the recognition that theology is human made and playfully constructed. Again, theopoetics literally means "God-making". But that begs the question, right? Is the theopoet simply making God up? Or is God also involved in the act of poesies? Thatamanil argues that it is a 'both and'. To view constructive theology as theopoetics is to imagine that the divine somehow participates in the very human activity of imagining God.  Theopoetics unsettles the duality between human imagination and divine creativity. Yes theopoetics implies that we make god up - but god participates in our work of making God up. 
• Like Art, theology is both a creative endeavor and a responsive one. Our images of god are precisely that - ours. But, they are imagined in response to a divine creativity, something that constructs and molds us before we construct and mold it. the assumption here is that theology can be a mode of discourse in which the divine and the human are permeable to eachother.

Thatamanil - Constructive theology as theopoetics 

• Constructive theologians own up to the fact that they are “making it up as they go along.” All too right we are! A charge that is, in any case, leveled at theologians, we unabashedly embrace. - 32
• Hence, a fully adequate and divinely inspired wisdom is available in the past, which needs only to be rearticulated for the contemporary moment. On such accounts, the task of theology is akin to refurbishing a functional and inhabitable home. The abode of theology is livable as is even if it might need a new coat of paint and cosmetic flourishes here and there. -33
• Constructive theologians take on the name because we wish to make transparent that what human hands have made, other human hands can and must remake. For some, this might prove to be a destabilizing truth. Not so for the constructive theologian. Constructive theologians forthrightly acknowledge their creative agency because they are suspicious about strategies that seek to minimize the role of human creativity in theological production. When human creativity goes unnamed or is elided altogether, then all-too-human theological formulations are granted unquestionable divine authority; they can no longer be interrogated. - 34
• If my constructions are mine  - however much they aspire to be faithful responses to divine initiative- they remain provisional, historically conditioned, and culturally contextual. We know we are making it up as we go along, and we have the humility, courage, and, I might add, playfulness to say so.- 35
• 3 Types of Constructive Theologian POV's about who is involved - 35

1. “If faith is a gift of God, as it has been traditionally understood, theology is clearly human work, and we must take full responsibility for it. But it is human work that emerges out of faith’s own need for more adequate orientation and symbolization. Such theological activity may reinforce—or it may weaken further—the religious stance.” (Kauffman) 
2. For Farley, the line between faith and human reflection about faith is not nearly as stark or impermeable as it appears to be for Kaufman. Farley manages to find a way to affirm both human fallibility and the contingency of all theological construction but nonetheless leaves human creativity open to divine agency. Theology takes its bearings from God’s “coming forth as God” in redemption.
3. Articulated most vibrantly in the work of Catherine Keller, theopoiesis dances along the edge of a fertile ambivalence in the notion of “poiesis,” namely, “making.” In the bringing together of “ theos” and “poiesis,” this ambivalence is not just doubled but multiplied. God-making—is the theopoet making God up? Or is the agent of poiesis the divine itself? Is God doing the making? Or might it somehow be both? Might it be possible to imagine that the divine participates in the very human activity of imagining God?

• What if God participates in our work of making God up and yet, nonetheless, that work remains also human and thus fallible? - 36
• Any act of theological creativity—a prayer, a sermon, a liturgical act, a classroom lecture, a journal article, or theological book—will of necessity be a modest intervention; but if such activities are understood to be part of divine and worldly unfolding, constructive theology takes on theopoetic import. Theology at its best is/is like prayer. Theologians confess in a Pauline key, “We do not know how to [theologize] as we ought but that very Spirit intercedes in us with sighs too deep for words.” 
• Theopoeisis is not, first, a human activity; rather, God does God-making first. God is engaged in constructive God-making. Where? In human beings or—and here we advert to process theology—in human becomings. The Word is being made flesh not only in Jesus but in human beings generally. - 38
• The term theopoetics finds its ancestor in the ancient Greek theopoiesis. As poiesis means making or creation, so theopoiesis gets rendered as “God-making” or “becoming divine.” - 38
•  Keller points to a “mysticism of participation” at work in these root theologies of God-making and God-becoming. At play is also a peculiar paradox of intimacy and unknowability: the God who absolutely exceeds us is nonetheless also present as that which we ourselves are becoming. The mystery becomes ours as we become the mystery by the grace of mystery itself. -38
• To say and to unsay, to say again and unsay once more is to trace the path of the mind’s ascent into the divine darkness, the cloud of unknowing. Theopoeisis is, therefore, simultaneously the name for a divine process of God-making/God-becoming and the human discursive processes by which that very becoming takes place. - 38
•  First-order theology is God-talk understood as God’s speaking to us and our responsive speaking to God....Such God-talk is also God-making, theopoiesis. Such God-talk/God-making can be simultaneously God speaking to us and through us as well as in us, but not, I would hasten to add, without us. - 39
• Second-order theology follows upon and attends to the entailments of first-order theopoeisis. Here, theology enters into a second speculative moment that seeks to excavate the meanings of first-order theological becoming and bespeaking. - 39
• Consider, fi nally, another reason why theopoetics has to it a primacy that goes unrecognized. The appeal to theopoiesis as theosis expanded and theosis as theopoiesis contracted introduces a register of discourse in which the human and the divine are permeable to each other. Divinity is communicable, a communicable wellness, that creatures can catch by the initiative of divine grace. - 39

the rest is about why constructive theology is needed - not needed for my paper. 

**** God and Goddess Quotes... 

Dean - Liberal Realism

• leftist historian Tony Judt criticized political liberals in terms that would apply equally to religious liberals. He explained that liberals may acknowledge that “the point of history may not be for things to get better,” but they assume that “as a matter of fact they do.” But, said Judt, we actually “see so much regress that it’s hard to say that progress is the default condition of the human story.” <--- Alex's point that humans are slowly improving... are they? -213
• This could be a sort of outline I use for my paper: "in what follows, first, I sample the optimism of most liberal theologians, contrasting it with the realism of representative revisionists; second, I identify Eliot’s own persuasiveness and liberality; third, I analyze Eliot’s God language in “The Dry Salvages”; fourth, I suggest the implications of that God language; and, fifth, I propose that that poem’s representation of the appearance and/or the reality of the moral ambiguity of God could contribute to a new realism in religious liberalism.  - 215
•  Otto intended to begin with the numinous, which is transmitted to a “feeling-element,” which instills a “creature feeling” of nothingness, which in turn translates into feelings of repulsion and dread, as well as fascination and attraction. (219)
• Unlike theology, poetry utilized what Eliot called the “auditory imagination,” which is “the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end.” - 220
• With “significant emotion,” 43 an audience may be able to peer over the “frontiers of consciousness beyond which words fail, though meanings still exist” - 221 quoting Elliot 
• 
  

Chrysalis

 I probably spelled that title wrong. 

I am at the precipice of a big spiritual shift in my life. 

If I had to describe where I want my spiritual practice to be I would say: Bardic, Shamanic, and Ecstatic. 

If I had to describe where my spiritual practice is now I would say: Slightly Bardic, Unsure, and Stagnant. 

I actually have a direction I want to go in, found a practice (Anderson Feri Craft) that I can draw on for guidance as I attempt to manuever closer to my spiritual goals. This is a relativley closed practice that one needs to be initiated in - which I do not, as I do not share the same pantheon and refuse to give up my gods. However, while I do not seek to know all their mysteries, I do want to draw on that practice as the goals of that specific form of witcraft is very similar to my own. There are some books I want to get that were written by teachers of diffrent bloodlines in Feri Witchcraft; nothing too close to their secrets but general advice, teachings, and pointers in following and creating your own practice. I am thinking of getting them one at a time to try to read as well as with my school studies, so this will be hard. But I am excited and I want to do the work. 

I'm gonna need another book shelf for all of the books I am getting for my own spiritual growth and any books that I will keep from my time in semenary school hahaha.

I feel like I have been a hungry hungry caterpillar just wantering around; I am feeling the pull to start building my chrysalis and I am excited for the transformation I will undergo. 

Daniel and money

900 rent

100 utilities

25 internet

200 car payment (10K Car - AWD/FWD)

85 car insurance

80 gas

50 phone 

50 savings

80 health insurance 

100 misc. 

200 gym membership

80 therapy

500 food

---------------------------------

2450 = 2882 before tax. x 12  = about 35K = 15.62 an hour

SO

$16 an hour minimum for full time work. bare necessities 

$17 an hour = about $200 fun money 

$18 an hour  = $400 fun money

Health Insurance 2025

 Anthem Silver Priority/Lean 4000 (3 Free PCP Visits + $0 Select Drugs + Incentives)

Metal Level: Silver

Plan type: HMO

Plan ID: 79475WI0340252

$344.87

Previous:

Anthem Silver Blue Preferred/Broad 4000 (3 Free PCP Visits + $0 Select Drugs + Incentives)

The only difference is that previously it would help with out of network a little bit. The current one is in netwrok only. saves me a chunk of change. 

I will be adding dental. 

EMI Health Advantage PPO

National provider network

Plan ID: 69380WI0040004

$8.40

Overall cost each month for budgeting for health insurance: $355

Goodness paper quotes

The second essay considers the incongruity between the goodness of (ultimate) reality and the reality of radical evil, particularly the unthinkable atrocity of the Nazi Holocaust. How do you reconcile your deepest theological convictions (e.g. the belief in a benevolent God) with the horrors of Auschwitz? How does the abundance of radical evil in the world affect your theology ? What are our responsibilities in the face of violence, trauma, injustice, genocide, and the moral ambiguity of (human) existence? 

We 

We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.

Douglas Preston, The Monster of Florence

Memorable quotes:

• Cohn  - PG 14 - burning children quotes
• Keller - 78 & 89;6 & 7,  9, 70, 85, 92, 
• The inner struggle of Eli when his father is dying - urge to be with him, the fear that holds him away in the final moments. 
• Judith Plaskow - Coming of Lilith -
• pg 134 - "Once God becomes Goddess...she is connected too exclusively with the so called female virtues - nurturing, healing, and caretaking, and is cordoned off from the savagery of the world."
• pg 135 - "A number of Feminist writers and religious thinkers have begun to articulate a fuller and more complex account of the divine than the notion of a "nice" female God allows for...Unless the God who speaks to the feminist experiences of empowerment and connection can also speak to the frightening, destructive, and divisive aspects of out lives, a whole side of existence will be severed from the feminist account of the sacred."
• .... The destruction of God, killing of innocence, etc, "seems to point to a profoundly important dimension of human existence." - 135
• "I do not believe in a God who stands outside of our history and manipulates it and who therefore can be charged with our moral failures" - 135
• "The goddess as energy of the universe, responsible for life and death and rebirth" -136
• Plaskow Talk - "This is our task as human beings… To affirm the ties that bind us to each other and creation and to be the justice required for creation to flourish.”
• Rubenstein - Chapter 1
• https://unitedseminary.instructure.com/courses/1396/files/62809?module_item_id=31313
• [is there] something in the logic of Christian theology that when pushed to an extreme justifies, if it does not excite to, the murder of Jews. - 5
• Testified - only one who did....After the war.... devoted to healing and reconciliation. - 5
• he too was guilty, in fact it was a guilt to be shared by all peoples - 6
• pg 7 & 8... blaming the jews for making themselves easy targets for hitler and then not changing afterwards. 
• pg 12 underlined.
• Rubenstein - Chapter 8
• Rabbi Wessermann -  Wessermann also saw promise of redemption in the misfortunes. Indeed, he argued that the more intense the suffering of the people, the closer the advent of the messiah" pg 159
• Ignaz Maybaum - the world can only hear and respond to God's call in the language of death and destruction. 164
• Maybaum - Hitler was sent by God to do what the "progressives" [of the west] should have done but failed to do. This meant that the work of creative destruction had to be carried out at an infinitely greater cost un human suffering. - 165
• The traditional chrisitan response... its because you're not christians; the only wway to escape this suffering and divine retribution is stop being jews and become christians. - pg 169
• Is Spirit Cold and unfeelings? - Today I no longer consider the cosmos "cold, silent, unfeeling." at the very least, insofar as man is a part of the cosmos and is capable of love as well as hate, the cosmos cannot be said to be entirely cold and silent. - pg 172
• Definition of religion -Religion is more than just a system of beliefs; it is also a system of shared rituals, customs, and historical memories by which members of a community cope and celebrate the moments of crisis in their own lives and the lives of their inherited community. - pg 173
• Religion is not so much dependent upon belief as upon practices related to the life cycle and a sense of shared historical experience. -174
• Rubenstein Chapter 9
• Fackenheim - "Insisting that the jewish people must respond to this shattering challenge with a refirmation of God's presence in history, Fackenheim acknowledged that it is impossible to affirm God's saving presence at Auschwitz. Nevertheless he insisted that while no "redeeming voice" was heard, a "commanding voice was heard""... survive and have faith despite this otherwise hitler wins again. pg 180
• The passion and psychological power of this position is undeniable.  - 181
• Fackenheim - Muselmanner: the person who is dead while alive. (pg 184)
• Those who rebelled and refused to become muselmanner were the first to beguin to mend and restore faith. 185
• The first act of resistance was the simple decision, against all odds, to survive, and if worst comes top pass die the death of a human being. The second was to grasp the "logic of destruction." This is difficult enterprise because there is always danger...that what is understood will be accepted, at least in thought. Fackenheim therefore insists that thought must be accompanied by active resistance. - 186
• Resistance was "both a way of being and a way of thought"....authentic thought existed only among the resisting victims. 186
• “What then is the function of religion in the time of the death of God? It is the way we share and celebrate, both consciously and unconsciously, through the inherited myths, rituals, and traditions of our communities, the dilemmas and the crises of life and death, good and evil. Religion is the way we share our predicament; it is never the way we overcome our condition” (Rubenstein, 262)
• Cohn-Sherbok
• pg 128
• pg 134!!!!!
• 
  

Possible outline:

1.  My Theological convictions
1. What is Evil? - is it the absence of love? no. I would kill out of love. I would kill out of grief turned to hatred. Perhaps the Nazi's killed out of grief turned to hatred. Exerting control over another's free will?  Does that make parents evil to their kids? Causing harm for selfish reasons - my own definition. But even that falls short - is the lion evil for eating the zebra? When does it get a pass? (Survival. Survival is not evil.) Excessive harm caused for selfish reasons?
2. Spirit - is it good or evil? --- Spirit. Not God.  - quote on unfeeling cpt 8. Purpose behind suffering -- the will to survive... leading into my own experiences. 
2. My own experiences of Evil 
1. Knife attack - was that evil? his intentions were, but his motivations were unknown. I doubt he was a serial killer with a need for death.. perhaps a gang initiation and it was down to survival? That is of coarse he didn't intend to rape me.  
2. Where was spirit in these cases? -- Commanding voice. 
3. In reference to the holocaust
1. Humanity's role - selfishness, grief, hatred , love of country, survival, fear
2. God's role - Spirit's role
3. Does this change how I feel about evil and Spirit? No. But it validates how I feel about humanity. Which in itself is a theological conviction of mine. 
4. What are our responsibilities in the face of violence.
1. Facing Reality: We all like to think we would hide ann frank... until a gun is pointed at your children. We all like to think that when you hear the panicked buzzer at midnight you would let in the girl fearing for her life. There are some that would - when I hear a scream I go look. When I saw a black kid pulled over I pulled over too in the parking lot... but would I do that on the highway? Would I run to help someone whos been stabbed with the attacker still there?
2. What do we do when we listen to our survival instincts and do not help in the moment? How do we help after?
3. How do we wrestle with the guilt of subconsciously contributing to evil? (wars in congo, child labor in other countries)
5. Closing
1. Evil is a human trait
2. Spirit is impartial and has nothing to do with it
3. The gods can help and guide as best they can but at the end of the day they cannot control us
4. Suffering serves a purpose - sometyimes that is to teach us what to avoid, so,etimes its to teach us that we will survive (knife, assault, etc), sometimes its to bring us closer to the divine itself. In desperation we are the most open. -- chapter 8 & 9.
5. All we can do - is heal and do better. AND NOT BLAME THE VICTIMS. This is what sparks my desire to be a chaplain - definition of religion and how this makes me want to be a religious leader. (My inherited community will be wherever i get a job). 
1. Pg 132 Cohn
2. Christ response to ambiguity 

Religious Horizons outline

First pick a tradition: Paganism

1.  What is the highest aspirations for human beings?
1. In paganism there is no agreed upon highest aspiration - if you ask a pagan what the purpose of life is the answer will vary vastly from person to person. That is the beauty of non-organized religion - it is all personal and individual. However there are a few that are generally agreed on:
• to live in harmony with nature, honoring the cycles of birth, growth, and death
•  each individual to forge his or her own sense of self-understanding, meaning, and purpose
• Humans exist not merely to enjoy the bounty of the environment, but also to serve and protect the environment, not only for future generations of humans, but indeed for the sake of nature itself.
2. The highest aspiration is self and soul development. You see, I believe that each life is meant to teach our souls a specific lesson - if you do not learn it in one life you repeat the lesson until you do. Then you develop another lesson based on something else that happened in a past life and continue the cycle. The soul's highest aspiration is to learn. A human's highest aspiration is to be authentic to themselves so that they are able to learn the lesson of that life - in most cases I believe that means to live life as happy and fulfilling as possible. Throughout your life you follow the same cycles as nature, as humans are a part of nature. birth/rebirth, growth, death/rebirth. 
3. There is no agreed upon answer as to what awaits us after each life, there is no agreed upon "end goal". For some it is enlightenment and return as a teacher for others in each life. For some it is reaching godhood - believing once the soul has learned all it needs to it will begin an immortal life as a god. For others it may be to reach a sort of enlightenment and to have the soul dissolve and rejoin Spirit directly - becoming a life sustaining force without life itself. I personally think there is no goal - there is only learning. There are an infinite amount of lessons one can learn, an infinite amount of lives one can live, to the point that there is no end. 
2. What practices does paganism offer to become attune with the sacred/Spirit?
1. There are too many to count, so once again I will simply list the ones that I use.
1. Prayer
2. Witcraft - as a prayer, as power
3. divination - when the gods speak back to you (the benefits, the limits, the hard truths)
4. These all serve others as well as ourselves. I feel more connected to the divine through helping others than myself - yet it is through prayer that connect for myself, and divination/service to others I feel divinity through me. 
3. Which vocabulary of human becoming is most helpful for thinking about religious goals and aspirations?
1. Authenticity - Living life as the true self is the only way to listen to one's soul and go through life open to the lesson. Being authentic to ones self is to live in joy and love - if you do not embrace life then you have not taken the first step to learning the soul lesson. I cannot love humanity if I cannot love myself - seeking my own personal development will help me grow into a person that can better serve others in love because I love life. 
2. Vocation - when one lives authentically and following with one's values and ethical perspective you will feel called to help the earth in some way.  Where your "deep gladness [authenticity] and the world's hunger [responsibility] meet" - Buechner

1. https://www.patheos.com/library/pagan/beliefs/human-nature-and-the-purpose-of-existence

The Vocabulary of Self

 Authenticity:

• At first, this idea that the source is within doesn’t exclude our being related to God or the Ideas; it can be considered our proper way to them. In a sense, it can be seen just as a continuation and intensification of the development inaugurated by Saint Augustine, who saw the road to God as passing through our own reflexive awareness of ourselves. - 57
• Herder put forward the idea that each of us has an original way of being human. Each person has his or her own “measure” is his way of putting it. This idea has entered very deep into modern consciousness. - 57
• There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s. But this gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life, I miss what being human is for me. - 58
• Being true to myself means being true to my own originality, and that is something only I can articulate and discover. In articulating it, I am also defining myself. I am realizing a potentiality that is properly my own. This is the background understanding to the modern ideal of authenticity, and to the goals of self-fulfillment or self-realization in which it is usually couched. - 58
• We define this always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the identities our significant others want to recognize in us. And even when we outgrow some of the latter— our parents, for instance— and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live. - 59
• So the contribution of significant others, even when it occurs at the beginning of our lives, continues throughout. Some people might be following me up to here, but still want to hold on to some form of the monological ideal. True, we can never liberate ourselves completely from those whose love and care shaped us early in life, but we should strive to define ourselves on our own to the fullest degree possible, coming as best we can to understand and thus gain some control over the influence of our parents, and avoiding falling into any further such dependencies. We will need relationships to fulfill but not to define ourselves. - 59
• we are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness— an encoded birthright knowledge of who we are, why we are here, and how we are related to others. We may abandon that knowledge as the years go by, but it never abandons us.Philosophers haggle about what to call this core of our humanity, but I am no stickler for precision. Thomas Merton called it true self. Buddhists call it original nature or big self. Quakers call it the inner teacher or the inner light. Hasidic Jews call it a spark of the divine. Humanists call it identity and integrity. In popular parlance, people often call it soul. - 61
• But we live in a culture that discourages us from paying attention to the soul or true self— and when we fail to pay attention, we end up living soulless lives - 62
• The moralists seem to believe that we are in a vicious circle where rising individualism and the self-centeredness inherent in it cause the decline of community— and the decline of community, in turn, gives rise to more individualism and self-centeredness. The reality is quite different, I think: as community is torn apart by various political and economic forces, more and more people suffer from the empty self syndrome. - 65
• The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass stand at the wheel; watch the wind and waves and know when to take in the sail, and read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman. - 66-67

Virtue

• Aristotle - Happiness
• Now happiness, more than anything else, seems complete without qualification. For we always choose it because of itself, never because of something else. Honor, pleasure, understanding, and every virtue we certainly choose because of themselves, since we would choose each of them even if it had no further result; but we also choose them for the sake of happiness, supposing that through them we shall be happy. Happiness, by contrast, no one ever chooses for their sake, or for the sake of anything else at all...Happiness, then, is apparently something complete and self-sufficient, since it is the end of the things achievable in action. 74
• We have found, then, that the human function is activity of the soul in accord with reason or requiring reason...Now each function is completed well by being completed in accord with the virtue proper [to that kind of thing]. And so the human good proves to be activity of the soul in accord with virtue, and indeed with the best and most complete virtue, if there are more virtues than one. 75
• DeYoung - Vice vs Virtue
• Virtues are “excellences” of character, habits or dispositions of character that help us live well as human beings...Similarly, the vices are corruptive and destructive habits. 77
• Very simply, a virtue (or vice) is acquired through practice— repeated activity that increases our proficiency at the activity and gradually forms our character. 77
• Virtue often develops, that is, from the outside in. This is why, when we want to re-form our character from vice to virtue, we often need to practice and persevere in regular spiritual disciplines and formational practices for a lengthy period of time. - 78
• The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle called this the difference between acting according to virtue— that is, according to an external standard which tells us what we ought to do whether we feel like it or not— and acting from the virtue— that is, from the internalized disposition which naturally yields its corresponding action. The person who acts from virtue performs actions that fit seamlessly with his or her inward character. Thus, the telltale sign of virtue is doing the right thing with a sense of peace and pleasure. What feels like “second nature” to you? These are the marks of your character. - 79
• saints such as Mother Teresa are a model of kindness and mercy; 79 -- yeah right 
• How do Christ’s example and the work of grace affect a Christian view of virtues and vices? A Christian understanding of temperance, for example, will have to include not only moderating our desire for food, but also fasting and feasting. Likewise, the virtue of courage challenges us to endure suffering for the sake of love, relying on God’s strength, even to the point of martyrdom— this in contrast to contemporary portraits that show us a brave individual charging the enemy alone with guns ablaze. Christ teaches us too how gentleness and humility ground righteous anger, enabling us both to turn over tables of injustice and to turn the other cheek. - 79 --> REFLECTION
• The tradition eventually singled out seven virtues— three theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) and four cardinal virtues (practical wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance). These are the qualities of character that everyone who wants to become Christlike must seek to cultivate, whatever his or her culture or calling. At the same time, these virtues are the foundation of human perfection for all human beings.79-80
• Pieper
• This is all about mother theresa as the virtue of love. what a joke. I skipped it. 
• Ginzburg - little virtues
• As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one’s neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know. . . .  - 85
• Brooks - Moral Bucket List
• It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral— whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love? - 89
• But if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a selfsatisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet. - 89 
• AUTHENTICITY
• I came to the conclusion admired had achieved an spiritual accomplishments. that wonderful unfakeable inner people virtue, are built made, not born— that the people slowly from specific moral I and spiritual accomplishments.  - 90
• Yeah.... through suffering. 
• How he says it:
• The Humility Shift - But all the people I’ve ever deeply admired are profoundly honest about their own weaknesses...They have achieved a profound humility, which has best been defined as an intense self-awareness from a position of other-centeredness. (90)
• Self Defeat -  External success is achieved through competition with others. But character is built during the confrontation with your own weakness. (90)
• The Dependency Leap  - But people on the road to character understand that no person can achieve self-mastery on his or her own. Individual will, reason and compassion are not strong enough to consistently defeat selfishness, pride and self-deception. We all need redemptive assistance from outside. (90)
• Energizing Love - That kind of love decenters the self. It reminds you that your true riches are in another. (91)
• The call within the call - We all go into professions for many reasons: money, status, security. But some people have experiences that turn a career into a calling. These experiences quiet the self. All that matters is living up to the standard of excellence inherent in their craft. (91)
• The Conscious Leap - Commencement speakers are always telling young people to follow their passions. Be true to yourself. This is a vision of life that begins with self and ends with self. But people on the road to inner light do not find their vocations by asking, what do I want from life? They ask, what is life asking of me? How can I match my intrinsic talent with one of the world’s deep needs? - 92
• Mencius - sayings
• A man’s letting go of his true heart is like the case of the trees and the axes. When the trees are lopped day after day, is it any wonder that they are no longer fine? If, in spite of the respite a man gets in the day and in the night and of the effect of the morning air on him, scarcely any of his likes and dislikes resemble those of other men, it is because what he does in the course of the day once again dissipates what he had gained. If this dissipation happens repeatedly, then the influence of the air in the night will no longer be able to preserve what was originally in him, and when that happens, the man is not far removed from an animal. - 94
• Tzu  - Improving yourself
• When you see good, then diligently examine your own behavior; when you see evil, then with sorrow look into yourself. When you find good in yourself, steadfastly approve it; when you find evil in yourself, hate it as something loathsome. He who comes to you with censure is your teacher; he who comes with approbation is your friend; but he who flatters you is your enemy. - 95

Vocation:

• Hardy - Work, Life, Vocational Choice
• First, to those of us who are familiar with the language of the Bible, there is something odd about the phrase “choosing a vocation.” For in the New Testament the primary, if not exclusive, meaning of the term “vocation”—or calling (klēsis) — pertains to the call of the gospel, pure and simple... Here we are not being asked to choose from a variety of callings, to decide which one is “right” for us. Rather, one call goes out to all— the call of discipleship. For it is incumbent upon all Christians to follow Christ, and, in so doing, to become the kind of people God wants us to be. The call of the gospel is not to a particular occupation, but to sainthood. ... We are called, then, not only to be certain kinds of persons, but also to do certain kinds of things.- 125
• the “general” and the “particular” calling - 126
• The general calling is to be a Christian, that is, to take on the virtues appropriate to followers of Christ, whatever one’s station in life. - 126
• The particular calling, on the other hand, is the call to a specific occupation— an occupation to which not all Christians are called...St. Paul refers to such particular callings as the “gifts” of the Spirit: to be an apostle, a prophet, a teacher, a worker of miracles, an administrator, and the like (1 Cor. 12:28– 31). - 126
• As a second preliminary observation, lest we move too quickly from the question of vocation to that of paid occupation, we ought to remind ourselves that vocation is the wider concept. One need not have a paid occupation in order to have a vocation. Indeed all of us have, at any one time, a number of vocations— and only one of them might be pursued as a paid occupation. ... I may not have a paid occupation. But that doesn’t mean I have no calling in life.- 126
• “Today we consider it an imperfection of society for people to be fixed in their opportunities and jobs by class and birth,” management theorist Peter Drucker observes, “where only yesterday this was the natural and apparently inescapable condition of mankind.” Freedom of choice regarding occupation is a relatively novel social phenomenon. Those of us who are faced with such a choice are, historically speaking, a very small minority indeed. - 127
• Taking their initial bearings from the biblical witness together with a reflection upon the human condition, they began with a definition of work that went something like this: work is the social place where people can exercise the gifts that God has given them in the service of others. - 128
• The first step then, in making a responsible choice of vocation, is ascertaining precisely which gifts God has bestowed upon me. - 128
• God can give us two other things that will narrow down the field considerably. First, he can give us a concern. Of course, we are all concerned about ourselves and how we will fare in this life. No special work of God is required for that. But if we can detect within a growing concern for others, then we can be sure God is at work within us. - 131
• Furthermore, God may have endowed us with certain lively interests apart from any other-directed concerns— interests in mathematics, music, or microbiology. Those interests lead us to cultivate skills which we can in turn use in the service of others. - 131
• Rather, in making a career choice, we ought to take seriously the doctrine of divine providence: God himself gives us whatever legitimate abilities, concerns, and interests we in fact possess. These are his gifts, and for that very reason they can serve as indicators of his will for our lives. - 132
• Badcock - Choosing 
• Horne, in which the relevance of mysticism to the question of career choice is highlighted. Horne notes that the typical experience of the mystic in the Christian tradition (among others) involves a path through darkness into light. The darkness is a necessary stage within the whole journey of spiritual development. Horne attempts to draw a parallel between such mystical experience and the psychological processes by which individuals make decisions concerning their future. There is, he suggests, much to be gained from such an analysis. The feeling of being “at sea,” and even of lacking an integrated self-image and of wishing to have one, is common currency in many young people’s experience. We cannot choose for the future without a sense of identity in the present and without a realistic sense of what we may become. - 133
• The potential variety of factors to consider is enormous, so much so that, in the final analysis, there is no escaping the conclusion that any career choice will inevitably be a risky venture, undertaken “in faith,” or in a kind of faith, in relation to what is as yet unseen and unknown. - 134
• Jesus speaks of the human goal in two ways. The first is in terms of the great commandments. The human goal and the divine imperative here coalesce: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart . . . ; you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30– 31 par.). From the standpoint of the spiritual life, the human goal is succinctly summed up in these key statements. The second, and literally crucial way in which Jesus speaks of the goal of life is in terms of discipleship: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34 par.). - 136
• I have sought to develop a different understanding of the Christian vocation. Christian vocation is not reducible to the acquisition of a career goal or to its realization in time. It is, rather, something relating to the great issues of the spiritual life. It has to do with what one lives “for” rather than with what one does. - 137
• Lewis - Learning in War Time
• Let us clear it forever from our minds. The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly “as to the Lord.” This does not, of course, mean that it is for anyone a mere toss-up whether he should sweep rooms or compose symphonies. A mole must dig to the glory of God and a cock must crow. We are members of one body, but differentiated members, each with his own vocation. - 138
• By leading that life to the glory of God I do not, of course, mean any attempt to make our intellectual inquiries work out to edifying conclusions. That would be, as Bacon says, to offer to the author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie. I mean the pursuit of knowledge and beauty, in a sense, for their own sake, but in a sense which does not exclude their being for God’s sake. An appetite for these things exists in the human mind, and God makes no appetite in vain. -  139 ***Might use this for my beauty paper ~
• Humility, no less than the appetite, encourages us to concentrate simply on the knowledge or the beauty, not too much concerning ourselves with their ultimate relevance to the vision of God. -- now this is a definition of Humility that I don't mind.  - 139
• The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course, it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty. As the author of the Theologia Germanica says, we may come to love knowledge— our knowing— more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar’s life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived. - 139
• Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. - 139 - fuck you too Lewis. 
• Perhaps it may be useful to mention the three mental exercises which may serve as defenses against the three enemies which war raises up against the scholar. - 140
• The first enemy is excitement— the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work. The best defense is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one. -140
• The second enemy is frustration— the feeling that we shall not have time to finish. - 140
• The third enemy is fear. War threatens us with death and pain. No man— and specially no Christian who remembers Gethsemane— need try to attain a stoic indifference about these things, but we can guard against the illusions of the imagination. - 140
• Bonhoeffer - the place o f responsibility 
• Human beings experience the divine grace that claims them. It is not human beings who seek out grace in its place, for God lives in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16). Instead, grace seeks out and finds human beings in their place— the Word became flesh (John 1:14)—and claims them precisely there. - 142
• People do not fulfill the responsibility laid on them by faithfully performing their earthly vocational obligations as citizens, workers, and parents, but by hearing the call of Jesus Christ that, although it leads them also into earthly obligations, is never synonymous with these, but instead always transcends them as a reality standing before and behind them. - 143
• The question of the place and the limit of responsibility has led us to the concept of vocation. However, this answer is valid only where vocation is understood simultaneously in all its dimensions. ... The boundary of vocation has been broken open not only vertically, through Christ, but horizontally, with regard to the extent of responsibility. - 143
• Vocation is responsibility, and responsibility is the whole response of the whole person to reality as a whole... Responsibility in a vocation follows the call of Christ alone. .- 143
• Buechner - Vocation
• [Vocation] comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a person is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest. - 145
• Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. - 145
• Campbell - Vocation as Grace
• I would have to quote the whole thing... but vocation comes from connection to others. You do your vocation because of someone else, and they do it too because of you.