What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
Rejoice!!! To be free to be me without worldly responsibility is the dream. God will provide.
Author: a solitary
All alone with Jesus
who is
Solitude is to be sought not because of the relief from those who are not there but for His sake who is
John Henry Newman
Jesus alone
What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?
The same as every day: Jesus alone. (BTW, that is my desire/resolution every day, which does not mean it is a reality every day!)
sinner
What’s the trait you value most about yourself?
The trait I value is that I am aware that I am not perfect. To put it another way, that I am a sinner who needs Jesus every moment.
lots
What could you do more of?
Think, read, pray. Maybe write?
within your power
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Via St Paul, “worry about the things that are within your control”. And those outside of your control, leave alone.
hell is other people
Shortly before the end of [No Exit], one of the three strangers puts into words that toward which the whole play is turning from its beginning when he says that: “There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people.”
“Hell is other people” means thus that it is hell and unbearable to exist subject to, awaiting, controlled by, and turned toward the Other’s approval, judgements, and opinions.
“Hell is other people” describes an existence existing at the mercy of the Other, the Other’s judgements, and the Other’s accusing gaze. It is hell, tormenting, and unbearable to be unable to escape the Other’s look that objectifies and, in its objectifying, tortures.
Explaining Sartre’s “Hell Is Other People”
the “others”
Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.
Do not expect too much from others – it only leads to disappointment.
sermons
Kierkegaard writes scores of paragraphs critical of pastors under whose watch the church itself is disintegrating. He points out the following problems:
Tietjen, Mark A.. Kierkegaard: A Christian Missionary to Christians
- Pastors’ lives do not reflect their sermons.
- Pastors do not really mean what they preach, so that preaching “jams the lock on imitation” (FSE 261).
- Pastors preach watered-down drivel, and thus they are dishonest about the gospel—its claims and its demands on human life.
- The pastorate is a professional job no different from any other in law, business, medicine and so on. The implications are that some are drawn to the “trade” for secular reasons and thus some pastors have gotten themselves in the wrong business.
- In their sermons pastors promote the view that doctrine matters more than the imitation of Christ; faith is intellectualized.
- Pastors do not understand the world in which they live (i.e., non-Christian forms of existence), nor do they care to, and thus their message is largely irrelevant.
- Pastors offend, but for the wrong sorts of reasons.
The one thing I would add is that “pastors preach for their own benefit.”
… as a punishment for criminals
In antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages there was an awareness of this longing for solitude and a respect for what it means; whereas in the constant sociality of our day we shrink from solitude to the point (what a capital epigram!) that no use for it is known other than as a punishment for criminals. But since it is a crime in our day to have spirit, it is indeed quite in order to classify such people, lovers of solitude, with criminals.
Sickness Unto Death
this solitary life 