Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Monday my Friends! Added a new book of quotes to the kindle collection. I was in recent discussion about trying to use Amazon less and less, it is not easy. I have so many digital books I am not sure I cam ever be free of Amazon due to that but then again if the kindle went on the fritz I am not sure I would rabidly replace it. On to Thought-Provoking Quotes & Contemplations from Famous Physicists compiled by Murat Durmas. The books opens with Albert Einstein who has so many wonderful quotes, many of them familiar to us. On to Albert!
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
Questioning - a good if at times frustrating reality since the nature of questioning often interferes with the doing that life is often about. Interior questioning should never stop, questioning yourself, your experience and the meaning of your whatness. Questioning others ought to be springboard of discovery and deepened understanding, but sometimes the nature of the question is more inquisitional than curious. How one proposes questions, frames them as it were, often reveals something of their intentions. Of course Albert invites us to use questioning to dive into the experience of life and existence which can often pass us by if we are content to be distracted surface swimmers in life.
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
This came up in one of our Coffee Talks recently. The relationship between music and mathematics is fascinating. While I am not a great fan of mathematics, I do appreciate music greatly. I wonder if Einstein played an instrument? I tried playing the guitar, piano and flute at varies stages in my childhood, but the lack of discipline and sense of timing made it something that failed to hold my interest. Pushing play is my most musical endeavor, singing occurs too, usually not to the delight of those within earshot.
Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy to truth.
2020 tested this out to the max. Don't question the science is probably the most antiscientific statement one can make. Blind belief is usually the sole possession of religious zealots, in our secular age when many in the West do not believe in Da Jesus, some great flying spaghetti monster, or even Bob Dobbs. Thankfully in the absence of a Higher Power the government or science has been there to fill the void with new religious zealotry for many. Your patron saint, demi-gods and goddesses are many to choose from and they will happily delight in their celebrity. cough cough Fauci cough cough or any cultural personality that is put on a pedestal and unquestioningly and uncritically adored by the masses. The cult of personality is a dangerous thing. The "cult" part of the descriptor should be warning enough. Ramble over - time for a barn. Happy Monday!
Winter barn somewhere in Montana curtesy of DDG.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
