"The certainties of physics might establish an intellectual foundation, and philosophical ambiguities may delight, but not much compares to the roar of a bike."

     Matthew B.Crawford, as quoted in The chronicle of higher education, 8 April 2015.

"doxological contrition"

"From my youth, O Saviour, I have rejected Thy commandments.  Ruled by the passions, I have passed my whole life in heedlessness and sloth.  Therefore I cry to Thee, O Saviour, even now at the end:  Save me."

Ἐκ νεότητος Σωτὴρ, τὰς ἐντολάς σου ἐπαρωσάμην, ὅλον ἐμπαθῶς, ἀμελῶν ῥᾳθυμῶν, παρῆλθον τὸν βίον·  διὸ κράζω σοι Σωτήρ·  Κᾂν ἐν τῷ τέλει σῶσόν με.

     St. Andrew of Crete, The Great Canon, Tone six, Canticle one, Mattins, Thursday in the Fifth Week of Lent; The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (South Canaan, PA:  St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002), 380.  Greek:  Triōdion katanyktikon, periechon hapasantēn anēkousan autō akolouthian tēs Hagias kai Megalēs Tessarakostēs.  Apo tēs Kyriakēs tou telōnou kai tou Pharisaiou, mechri tou Hagiou kai Megalou Savvatou . . . , 4th ed.(Venice:  Ek tou Hellēnikou typ. ho Phoinix, 1876), 259 (the translators of The Lenton Triodion give their own original at the top of p. 66).  The wonderful phrase "doxological contrition" I have taken from a 7 September 2019 Thomistic Institute lecture by Fr. Khaled Anatolios entitled "Salvation:  a view from the Byzantine liturgy," which also put me onto this passage. 

"Joy to the world"

"from its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on earth.  It rendered impossible all joy we usually think of as possible.  But within this possibility, at the very bottom of this darkness, it announced and conveyed a new all-embracing joy, and with this joy it transformed the End into a Beginning.  Without the proclamation of this joy Christianity is incomprehensible.  It is only as joy that the Church was victorious in the world, and it lost the world when it lost that joy, and ceased to be a credible witness to it.  Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy."

     Alexander Schmemann, For the life of the world:  sacraments and Orthodoxy, 2nd rev. & expanded ed. (New York:  St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1973), 24.  I was reminded of this passage by Fr. Khaled Anatolios, whose 7 September 2019 Thomistic Institute lecture "Salvation:  a view from the Byzantine liturgy," which speaks of (among other things) "doxological contrition", is a helpful attempt to take up the senses in which joy must of course be a Christian experience (summarized from 39:45, or, more specifically, 40:50).

"A church is a building meant for a purpose served by no building we know."

     Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in stone:  church architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), 69, on "The Central Paradox:  An Unbloodied Altar".

"I have often heard of God's house but I never saw his barn before."

     A "new arrival" at the sight of "the first church building in [Chicago]," the Presbyterian meeting house built on Clark Street in 1834, in Edwin O. Gale, Reminiscences of early Chicago and vicinity (Chicago:  Revell, 1902), 361.  I was put onto this by Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in stone:  church architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2004), 201.
     Though I'm certainly no fan of ugly churches, somebody should probably have reminded this wag of a certain manger (φάτνη).

Were all the kings on earth to show | their greatest pomp and power | the smallest leaf they could not grow, | nor graft it on a flower.

Gik alle konger frem på rad
i deres magt og vælde,
de mægted ej det mindste blad
at sætte på en nælde.

     Hans Adolph Brorson, Salme 15, "Op, al den ting, som Gud har gjort" (1734), trans. Edward Broadbridge, for (supposedly) Hymns in English:  a selection of hymns from The Danish hymnbook (Copenhagen:  Det Kgl. Vajsenhus; [Frederiksberg]:  I samarbejde med Folkekirkens mellemkirkelige Råd, 2009).

The superficiality of the forgiveness of self

"The 'pagans' know the examination of conscience, [which] consists in scrutinizing oneself in the light of norms, [an] exercise that permits, in fact, a correction and a therapy of the passions of the soul (anger, pride, . . .).  But that 'practice of self' is envisaged by Basil of Caesarea through a parable of Scripture, which imparts a new dimension to the examination of conscience:  'God, be merciful to me a sinner!'  The appeal to the divine mercy is unknown in such spiritual exercises among the pagans, the 'me' of whom is, in a sense, the seat of salvation, of self-justification, [the seat] of a pardon that one offers oneself [(pardon auto-addressé)].  One would do well to compare the paragraph from Basil [(above)] with another from Seneca:  'I avail myself of this privilege, and every day I plead my cause before the bar of self.  When the light has been removed from sight, and my wife . . . has become silent, I scan the whole of my day and retrace all my deeds and words.  I conceal nothing from myself, I omit nothing.  For why should I shrink from any of my mistakes, when I may commune thus with myself?  "See that you never do that again; I will pardon you this time"' (De ira III.36.3-4[, trans. Basore]).  The Christian here takes leave of the habits of the [pagan] philosopher, in order to take up those of the publican of the Gospel, who awaits the pardon of a God who transcends the 'self'.  For, for Basil and his coreligionists, the tribunal of conscience is no longer the temporary jurisdiction of this world, which has not in itself the means of salvation.  If the orator [of the Basilean homily on Dt 15:9] is [a] debtor to the culture of the schools, and to its modes of discourse, one cannot for that reason neglect the important inflections imparted by him to this motif of profane origin.  The prosochè is integrated by Basil of Caesarea into a new context, which is no longer at all that of Stoic self-transfiguration.  This effort of the soul to be in conformity with itself, to compel itself [(se laisser)] to be guided by norms, takes on a renewed meaning in [the context of] a life conceived of and experienced henceforth as [one] fought over between God and the devil.  The prosuchè takes the shape of [a] technique of moral survival in fear of the [Last] Judgment and the hope of salvation. . . .  One has therefore to do with an assimilation on many levels:  Deuteronomy is read through profane philosophy to be sure, but profane philosophy is itself recontextualized within the framework of the Christian drama and eschatology.

     ". . . In the ethical order as in the gnoseological, Basil of Caesarea de-centers the prescription of the narrow frame of the little theatre of the 'self' by [means of] a superior comprehension of what the self is:  a creature who owes himself to [(se doit à)] God, whom he can know and love as his Creator and Benefactor, and whom he must fear [(redouter)] as his Judge."

     Arnaud Perrot, "L'attention à soi-même chez Basile de Césarée," Communio:  revue catholique internationale 40, no. 5 (sep-oct 2015):  35-37 (27-37).