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The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses
The gospel, which is the wisdom of upbringing, does not get involved in an intellectual or verbal quarrel with a person in order to prove to him that it is so; the gospel knows very well that this is not the way things are done, that a human being does not first understand that what it says is so and then decide to obey unconditionally, but the rev
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Another handy tautology of faith.
For despite its surroundings the lily is itself because it is unconditionally obedient to God; and because it is unconditionally obedient to God, it is unconditionally free of cares, which only those who are unconditionally obedient—especially under such circumstances—can be.
Søren Kierkegaard • The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses
Want to live carefree? Give unconditional obedience!
For the lily and the bird are unconditionally obedient to God; in their obedience they are so simple or so lofty that they believe that everything that happens is unconditionally God’s will, and that they have absolutely nothing to do in the world other than either to carry out God’s will in unconditional obedience or to submit to God’s will in unc
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Another definitional challenge. You can choose to embrace or merely accept god's will, but accept it you shall.
You shall learn joy from the lily and the bird. Even less may you become self-important—in view of the fact that the lily and the bird, after all, are simple—so that you (perhaps in order to feel that you are a human being) become clever, and speaking with reference to some particular tomorrow, say: “The lily and the bird, of course they can—they w
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The response to my prior question. Do I actually believe this? No, I do not. This text is not providing me joy.
the lily and the bird are themselves what they teach; they themselves express the subject in which they give instruction as teachers. This is different from the straightforward and primal originality, that in the strictest sense the lily and the bird possess firsthand that which they teach—it is acquired originality. And of course this acquired ori
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Finally, an elegant thought beautifully portrayed.
Yes, when you are surrounded by commotion or when you are immersed in diversions, this seems to be almost an exaggeration; there seems to be altogether too great a distance between loving and hating to permit someone to place them so close to one another, in a single breath, in a single thought, in two words that—without subordinate clauses, withou
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This seems to me a hideous and wrong-headed simplification. The third way is ambivalence or unknowing. One does not hate god if they feel that entity to be a human fiction.
For when you keep silent in the solemn silence of nature, then tomorrow does not exist, and when you obey as a creature obeys, then there exists no tomorrow, that unfortunate day that is the invention of garrulousness and disobedience.
Søren Kierkegaard • The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses
But isn't a large part of joy derived from improvement? How does the simplicity of the lily and bird account for that?
So learn, then, from the lily and the bird, learn this, the dexterity of the unconditioned.
Søren Kierkegaard • The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses
A human being needs to know that even if all human beings gave up on him, indeed, even if he were on the verge of giving up on himself, God is still the God of patience. This is incalculable wealth.