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• March 29th, 2021

  It seems Natalie was immersing herself in a dark Liturgy. The skin and the steel, the bluish tint of the vein. The spoon and the flame, that moment of bubbling alchemy that marked the entrance into another dimension. And when the needle penetrated her own body, the feeling of the drug itself. The taste of it from inside. The click of shackles released all over her nervous system, reaching back to smooth every jagged memory, and forward, a guarantee of the hours to come, a guardian against harsh thoughts and images, the settling in of a consciousness infused with Peace. *

• 📰 Leopold Kohr, the City as Convivial Centre

  This purpose was philosophically expressed by Aristotle when he said that men form communities not for justice, Peace, defence, or traffic, but for the sake of a good life.

• 📙 Crippled Grace

  Aquinas notes that sin causes us to be double minded, lacking internal integration, so that we are at war within ourselves (cf. Rom 7:14-26). Internal integration, for Aquinas, is ultimately a result of the Love of God, since one is at Peace with oneself when loving God wholeheartedly, and thereafter is able to Love others fully.

• 📙 Improvisation

  Love, joy, Peace, faithfulness, gentleness—these do not rise or fall with the stock market.

• 📙 Scattered Minds

  A contributing factor is that the distractible ADD mind does find it easier to focus when the noises and intrusions of the day have abated, and everyone else has gone to bed. Many adults have told me this is when they get their best work done, or when they feel at Peace enough to read or to rest.

  There is matchless unity, harmony and Peace in Nature—all that is lacking, in other words, in the ADD mind. Many parents will note that the hyperkinetic brain or body or mouth of their son or daughter will gradually slow down after a few short days away from the hurly-burly of everyday urban life.

• 📙 The Biology of Desire

  It took Johnny about four years to shift from normal drinking to serious drinking, as he calls it. During this period, the cues that pointed to the pub, after work or after a game, activated fields of synapses—grown heartier with each repetition—that stood for something different. Alcohol became a Symbol, the core of a network that included a promise of Peace, cessation of stress, relaxation. Neurally and psychologically, it invaded and overtook the companionship network, like crabgrass colonizing a lawn.

  Then there was nothing more to worry about, from the moment the needle pierced the vein, even before the drug transformed the chemistry of her nervous system. That wash of Peace started with the knowledge that this was a sure thing, no longer a maybe. This was what she’d been looking for, perhaps for a very long time.

  It seems Natalie was immersing herself in a dark liturgy. The skin and the steel, the bluish tint of the vein. The spoon and the flame, that moment of bubbling alchemy that marked the entrance into another dimension. And when the needle penetrated her own body, the feeling of the drug itself. The taste of it from inside. The click of shackles released all over her nervous system, reaching back to smooth every jagged memory, and forward, a guarantee of the hours to come, a guardian against harsh thoughts and images, the settling in of a consciousness infused with Peace.

• 📙 The Book of Disquiet

  Nothing matters, and I’m sure there have been people who, looking at life, didn’t have much patience for this child that was still awake, when all they wanted was the Peace that would come once the child went to bed.

• 📙 The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

  What is it we ask of God – is it a great thing? Yes it is a great thing: Peace for the ground of our heart, rest for our soul – give us that one thing and then we want not much more, then we can do without many things, then can we suffer great things for Thy name’s sake.

  How much sadness there is in life. Still, it won’t do to become depressed, one should turn to other things, and the right thing is work, but there are times when one can only find Peace of mind in the realization: I, too, shall not be spared by unhappiness.

• 📙 The Poetics of Space

  This being the case, if I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in Peace.

• 📙 The Spell of the Sensuous

  It is thus that, in Hebrew tradition, the expulsion from the eternity of Eden (and, later, the destruction of the Temple) is mirrored, at the other end of sequential history, by the promised return from exile, the coming of the Messiah, and an end to separated time. The forward trajectory of time, that is, will at last open outward, flowing back into the spacious eternity of living place (the “promised land”), and so into a golden age of Peace between all nations.