Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
despondency.
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
Bethesda on the evening of the Lord’s Day, and clouds receding over the roof: forty-seven members of the congregation on their feet with their souls in their mouths. The pews were hard and narrow, enclosed by high sides against which it was possible to lean when the sermon was long.
Sarah Perry • Enlightenment
anathema
Alice Walker • The Color Purple
sacramental
Aldous Huxley • The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell
The next step into mystical states carries us into a realm that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long since branded as pathological, though private practice and certain lyrical strains of poetry seem still to bear witness to its ideality
Richard Holloway • Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
In their exegesis of Genesis, these thinkers rendered any expression of human sexuality as problematic. It was not a question of more or less, appropriate or inappropriate sex. It was between a No and a Yes to sex, in which the Yes, even when licensed by marriage, was seen as the lesser of two evils, a concession to human weakness.
Richard Holloway • Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
With God or without God, what is the effect, what is the consequence for others, of the story we have chosen to follow? Cruelty or kindness? Hatred or love? Contempt or understanding?