Confessions of Saint Augustine | 
pickIt is a great book for many reasons, raw perspectives throughout, but is a great way to start to understand atheism. St Augustine‘s Confessions lays bare the complete inadequacy of religion to answer the great questions of life – which are really no different now than they were when he was grappling with them.
Recent acquisition for our personal library.
I casually collect interesting Penguin Classics and you're looking at a handful of the first PCs, the 'L series'. Some are American editions with price in $ and some are British with price in £. They sit on my desk at the standalone mid-size public library where I have worked for 17 years and where I am the librarian over adult nonfiction, local history, and reference.
#augustine #penguinclassics
panWhy is that I always seem to read my #doublespin first each month?
This just wasn‘t for me. Maybe I had a bad translation, but I had a hard time tracking the thought process through the book as a whole and at the sentence-level. There is some good stuff in here, but I ended up doing a lot of skimming.
I love buying used books and imagining where the book has been before it got to me. In this case, I don‘t have to imagine!
Re-reading this in its entirety for the first time in 20 years...I can see why 18 yo Julia was so into it 😁
#quotsymar19 @TK-421
#Book
There are thousands of quotes about books. So many we see almost daily. This is one I always love seeing.
Finally getting in some more fun reading 📖 😍😊
pickSt Augustine has a way of confronting paradox that is very intriguing. Book 1 contains questions I have asked of myself and of God, without receiving any heretofore discernible answer. Some of the chapters are more interesting than others, some are extremely dull. The theft of rotten peaches is quite the underwhelming sin. His conversion experience was very moving. 4/5
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your torrents, and all your waves and breakers sweep over me. —Ps 42:8
But even so, we still live by faith and not by sight, for we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope. —Book 13.13.14
Too true. Anyone else want to confess?
Read this as a meditative practice during the liturgical season of lent. Some heady, interesting things as well as beautiful imagery but certainly not an easy or idle read.
Me: I need read what I own so that when we move again I have less books to lug around!
Also me: Treat yo‘self.
In my defense, the top book is an Easter gift for my husband 😂
When you confess to your sister and bffs that you‘re cheating on the book group book. Not pictured are the ⛓emojis. My friends....🤦♀️
"Hi - LauraBeth? This is you Apple Watch here. I see that you sat your arse down and read at 6 am, 9-11 am and again at 6 pm (I particularly like your commitment with the 9-11 stretch). I know you're bad at math so let me break it down for you - you read for five hours today - and I don't think you're done. Do we need an intervention? Also - please ease up on your use of cat emojis - it's annoying." ??
But the arrogance of pride, the pleasures of lust, and the poison of vain curiosity are the impulses of a soul that is dead, not one so dead that it lacks all impulse, but one that is dead because it has forsaken the fountain of life and is swept along by the fleeting things of this world, lending itself to their ways.
The law is intended for edification, and it is an excellent thing, where it is applied legitimately, because its end is charity, based on purity of heart, on a good conscience and a sincere faith. Christ our Master well knows which are the two commandments on which, he said, all the law and the prophets depends.
My God, my Mercy, I shall not turn aside until you gather all that I am into that holy place of peace, rescuing me from this world where I am dismembered and deformed, and giving me new form and strength for eternity.
"But a mediator between God and man must have something in common with [both].... But since, by hidden pronouncements of your justice, you have given the devil licence to make a mockery of pride, he poses as mediator. For in one point he is like man: he is sinful. And in the other he pretends to be like God: because he is not clothed with a mortal body... He tries to represent himself as immortal."
Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will!
But the true Light is the Light which Tobias saw when, though his eyes were blind, he taught his son the path he should follow in life, and himself led the way, charity guiding his steps so that he did not stray.
I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late! You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I feel upon the lovely things of your creation. You were within me, but I was not with you.... You called me; you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness... You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace.
True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in you, O God, who are the Truth, to whom I look for salvation. This is the happiness that all desire.... But why does truth engender hatred? Why does your servant meet with hostility when he preaches the truth? It can only be that man's love of truth is such that when he loves something which is not the truth, he pretends that what he loves is the truth.
Love the various shades and hues of purple and was surprised to "find" some of these on my shelves. I always seem to remember to do photo challenges at night and apologise again for crappy lighting. It's a humid night and I was running around trying to get the best light and huffing and puffing and sweating, I hope this counts as a workout ? #coversinyrfavecolor #AndItsAugust @RealLifeReading
Who am I? What kind of man am I? What evil haven't I done? Or if there is evil I haven't done, what evil is there that I haven't spoken? If there is evil I haven't spoken, what evil is there I haven't willed to do? But you O Lord are good. You are merciful. You saw how deep I was sunk in death, and it was your power that drained dry the well of corruption in the depths of my heart. And all that you asked of me was to deny my will and accept yours.
"Can you not do what these men and these women do? Do you think they find the strength to do it in themselves and not in the Lord their God? It was the Lord their God who gave me [Continence] to them. Why do you try to stand in your own strength and fail? Cast yourself upon God and have no fear. He will not shrink away and let you fall. Cast yourself upon him without fear, for he will welcome you and cure you of your ills."
It is always the case that the greater the joy, the greater the pain which proceeds it. Why should this be, O Lord my God, when you are your own eternal joy, you are Joy itself and you are always surrounded by creatures which rejoice in you? Why is it that in this part of your creation which we know there is this ebb & flow of progress & retreat, of hurt & reconciliation? Is this the rhythm of our world?
And when I asked myself what wickedness was, I saw that it was not a substance but perversion of the will when it turns aside from you, O God, who are the supreme substance, and veers towards things of the lowest order, being 'bowelled alive' and becoming inflated with desire for things outside itself.
You use us all, whether we know it or not, for a purpose which is known to you, a purpose which is just.
O God, you who are so high above us and yet so close, hidden and yet always present, you have not parts, some greater and some smaller. You are everywhere, and everywhere you are entire. Nowhere are you limited by space. You have not the shape of a body like ours. Yet you made man in your own likeness, and man is plainly in space from head to foot.
Love [souls], then, in him & draw as many with you to him as you can. Tell them, 'He is the one we should love. He made the world & he stays close to it.' For when he made the world he did not go away & leave it. By him it was created & in him it exists. Wherever we taste the truth, God is there. He is in our very inmost hearts, but our hearts have strayed from him. Think well on it, unbelieving hearts, & cling to him who made you.
"They corrupt and pervert their own nature, which you made and for which you shaped the rules.... This is what happens, O Fountain of Life, when we abandon you, who are the one true Creator of all that ever was or is, and each of us proudly sets his heart on some one part of your creation instead of on the whole."
Ugh fine but I'm still going to keep reading, #WTForecast! I shouldn't complain since it's only in the 80's but I'm just not used to any heat. Korben is taking advantage of the sunshine though ??
Just started Confessions on #serialreader today. We'll see if I can stick with it. It's going to take some getting used to with all the "thee" and "thou".
"Cruelty is the weapon of the powerful, used to make others fear them."
"You see all these things, Lord, and yet you keep silence, because you are patient and full of compassion and can tell no lie. Will you be silent for ever? This very day you are ready to rescue from this fearsome abyss any soul that searches for you, any man who says from the depths of his heart, I have eyes only for you; I long, Lord, for your presence (Ps. 26:8; 27:8).
"My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you to whom I can say: if I have sinned unwittingly, do you absolve me. Keep me ever your own servant, far from pride. I trust, and trusting I find words to utter."
"And when you pour yourself out over us, you are not drawn down to us but draw us up to yourself: you are not scattered away, but you gather is together."
