sarkakaiaima

  “O wondrous creature, inferior only to the Creator, how much will you debase yourself? Do you love the world? But you yourself are superior to the world. Do you admire the sun? But you yourself are brighter than the sun. Do you philosophize about the harmony of the revolving heavens? But you are more sublime than the heavens. Do you examine the mysterious causes of the creation? But no creature is a greater mystery than you. Do you doubt it, when you may pass judgement on all creatures, yet none of them on you? But if you wish to judge them, then do not love them. Do not love to judge them. Love him who set you over, not under, all creatures. He set you over them not that through them you might be happier, but that he might be the one through whom you would be superior, subjecting all things to you as a crowning honor and keeping himself for you as rewarding happiness. Why then do you pursue fleeting beauties, when your own beauty neither fades with age nor grows shabby with pove...

  “[In praying for God’s Kingdom to come] we are also praying over the dark deeds of others in the world around us. We see how they are trapped in what they themselves often disown and despise. And we are especially praying about the structural or institutionalized evils that rule so much of the earth. These prevailing circumstances daily bring multitudes to do deeply wicked things they do not even give a thought to. They do not know what they are doing and do not have the ability to distance themselves from it so they can see it for what it is. That is the power of ‘culture.’   Culture is seen in what people do unthinkingly, what is ‘natural’ to them and therefore requires no explanation or justification. Everyone has a culture—or really, multidimensional cultures of various levels. These cultures structure their lives. And of course by far the most of everyone’s culture is right and good and essential. But not all.  For culture is the place where wickedness takes o...