This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Blofeld, fully John Eaton Calthorpe Blofeld
The world is full of paradox. For example, [in Buddhism] though no notion of a creator is entertained, great stress is laid upon the need for faith and piety. By faith is meant not trust in a benevolent diety avid for love, praise and obedience, but conviction that beyond the seeming reality misreported by our senses which is inherently unsatisfactory, lies a mystery which, when intuitively unsatisfactory, lies a mystery which, when intuitively perceived, will give our lives undreamed-of meaning and endow the most insignificant object with holiness and beauty.
Beauty | Example | Faith | Love | Meaning | Mystery | Need | Obedience | Object | Paradox | Piety | Praise | Reality | Trust | Will | World |
Trust each other again and again. When the trust level gets high enough, people transcend apparent limits, discovering new and awesome abilities for which they were previously unaware.
Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the public.
Government | Public | Trust | Government |
A firm persuasion of the superintendence of Providence over all our concerns is absolutely necessary to our happiness. Without it, we cannot be said to believe in the Scripture, or practice anything like resignation to his will. If I am convinced that no affliction can befall me without the permission of God, I am convinced likewise that he sees and knows that I am afflicted: believing this, I must in the same degree believe that if I pray to him for deliverance, he hears me: I must needs know, likewise, with equal assurance, that if he hears, he will also deliver me, if that will upon the whole be most conducive to my happiness: and if he does not deliver me, I may be well assured that he has none but the most benevolent intention in declining it.
Affliction | Intention | Persuasion | Practice | Providence | Resignation | Will |
Never trust the man who hath reason to suspect that you know he hath injured you.
Most often faith is understood as belief in certain propositional, doctrinal formulations that in some essential ands static way are supposed to “contain” truth. But if faith is relational, a pledging of trust and fidelity to another, and a way of moving into the force field of life trusting in dynamic center of value and power, then the “truth” of faith takes on a different quality. Truth is lived: it is a pattern of being in relation to others and to God. In this light, doctrines and creeds come to be seen as playing a different though still crucial role. Rather than being the repositories of truth, like treasure chests to be honored and assented to, they becomes guides for the construction of contemporary ways of seeing and being.
Belief | Dynamic | Faith | Fidelity | Force | God | Life | Life | Light | Power | Trust | Truth | Value |
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative [or creation] there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too... Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.
Action | Chance | Grace | Ideas | Ignorance | Initiative | Magic | Power | Providence | Truth | Think |
The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.
Belief | Nothing | Providence | Will |
Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love… Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.
Bereavement | Challenge | Faith | God | Happy | Life | Life | Love | Trust |
Oswald Hoffmann, fully Oswald C. J. Hoffmann
Can anyone think of believing in God without trusting Him? Is it possible to trust in God for the big things like forgiveness and eternal life, and then refuse to trust Him for the little things like clothing and food?
Eternal | Forgiveness | God | Life | Life | Little | Trust | Forgiveness | God | Think |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
If you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy.