Last Words

Setsuko Hara (Masaé Aida)

“My heart seems to be waiting for something.”
— Tokyo Story

After  Life
 

Equinox Flower

Yasujiro Ozu

 

Early Summer

Yasujiro Ozu

 

Late Autumn

Yasujiro Ozu

 

An Autumn Afternoon

Yasujiro Ozu

 

Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh

And entering into the house, they found the child with Mary his mother, and falling down they adored him; and opening their treasures, they offered him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
— Matthew 2:11

Much that is human is alien to an atheist.
 

Carmen

Kleiber, Obraztsova, Buchanan, Domingo, Mazurok, Vienna State Opera.

Life goes farther in death. Death on the opera stage is acted, not actual. Living beings conceive and perceive the fantastic.
 

Let my soul be with the saints!

John Henry Newman, quote in Stanley L. Jaki, Authoritatively No-Authority to Ordain Women . . .
 

Steven Weinberg

It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. As I write this I happen to be in an airplane at 30,000 feet, flying over Wyoming en route home from San Francisco to Boston. Below, the earth looks very soft and comfortable — fluffy clouds here and there, snow turning pink as the sun sets, roads stretching straight across the country from one town to another. It is very hard for us to realize that all this is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolorable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of god and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts[sic] human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. — Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, 1993, pp. 154–155.

If the universe is overwhelmingly hostile, then our present situation is fortunate, and our belief in our special relation to our little part of it justified. And are there so very few things that lift human life above the level of farce? And is not farce itself above the level of an overwhelmingly hostile universe? And if the universe is not overwhelmingly hostile? May look at Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith.  

Little Children

Little children, let no man deceive you. He that doth justice is just, even as he is just. He that committeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God committeth not sin: for his seed abideth in him. And he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Whosoever is not just is not of God, or he that loveth not his brother. — 1 John 3:7–10

We can and do sin — are we therefore children of the devil? Jesus said to the Jews who said, We be Abraham’s seed, and We have one father, even God: Ye are of your father the devil. (John 8:33, 41, 44). Yet the younger son did not wait to obtain his inheritence, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living (Luke 15:13), remained a son in his father’s eyes, even if in his own eyes he was no more worthy.

Let us not deceive ourselves. When we sin we are of the devil, not of God, in far country, not of the Kingdom of God. But if we return, God will receive us as his children, be it seventy times seven times and more. So should we love our children and our brothers and sisters.
 

Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard was concerned to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom. Today there is no Christendom. How should one introduce Christianity now? Kierkegaard is an advanced course; most of the world is in preschool.