This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Theology is reflection upon the reality of worship and explication of it. As such it is a rational affair… faith seeking to understand.
Faith | Reality | Reflection | Theology | Worship |
Paula Ripple, fully Paula Ripple Comin
Neither power nor wealth, neither education nor ability, neither gifts of creativity nor stores of human energy can insure against the reality that suffering will be our companion at some time during our journey. It is a presence as inseparable from the human condition as food and oxygen are from human life. It is part of our legacy.
Ability | Creativity | Education | Energy | Journey | Life | Life | Power | Reality | Suffering | Time | Wealth | Will |
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
The world is not an illusion; it is not nothingness, for it is willed by God and therefore is real… The reality of the world is not in itself but it is in the thought and being of the Creator. It is what God thought and willed it to be before it was.
God | Illusion | Reality | Thought | World | God | Thought |
The world of reality has its bounds. The world of imagination is boundless.
Imagination | Reality | World |
The visions of the mystics are determined in content by their belief, and are due to the dream imagination working upon the mass of theological material which fills the mind.
Belief | Imagination | Mind |
The most elementary ethical principle, when understood by the heart, means that out of reverence for the unfathomable, infinite, and living Reality we call God, we must never consider ourselves strangers toward any human being. Rather, we must bind ourselves to the task of sharing his experiences and try being of help to him.
In a human context, love means sharing an experience, showing compassion, and helping one another. But our love of God is akin to reverent love. God is infinite life. Thus the most elementary ethical principle, when understood by the heart, means that out of reverence for the unfathomable, infinite, and living Reality we call God, we must never consider ourselves strangers toward any human being.
Compassion | Experience | God | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Means | Reality | Reverence | God |
Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
It’s not about positional power; it’s not about accomplishments; it’s ultimately not even about what we do. Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding of the world. Ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities.
Power | Reality | Understanding | World | Leadership |
And what is the education of mankind if not the passage from faith in authority to personal conviction and to the sustained practice of the intellectual duty to consent to no idea except by virtue of its recognized truth, to accept no fact until its reality has been, in one way or another, established.
Authority | Duty | Education | Faith | Mankind | Practice | Reality | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |
Olaf Stapledon, fully William Olaf Stapledon
I should like to persuade religious people that some of us who reject their faith, nevertheless do have an experience which is at least very much like their essential religious experience. We feel, sometimes with remarkable intensity and clarity, our `at-oneness’ with something which might be the fundamental reality behind appearances.
Experience | Faith | Oneness | People | Reality |
Mundaka Upanishad, or or the Mundakopanishad
By means of higher knowledge, the wise behold every where the changeless Reality – which transcends the senses, which is uncaused, which is indefinable, which is all pervading and subtler than the subtlest, which is everlasting and is the source of all things and beings.
Ultimate Reality must be at least personal, or perhaps better said, Supra-personal or trans-personal – but not less than personal, and therefore not just non-personal.