pp. 139-146
WORDS/PHRASES: DETACHMENT, HOLY INDIFFERENCE, POVERTY-CHASTITY-OBEDIENCE, A SCRAP OF THE COSMOS
"As little as the bright eye can endure aught foreign in it, so little can the pure soul bear anything in it, any stain on it, that comes between it and God. To it all creatures are pure to enjoy; for it enjoyeth all creatures in God, and God in all creatures." --Eckhart, quoted in Mysticism.
"Since spiritual no less than physical existence, as we know it, is an endless Becoming, it too has no end."
So, it is not things that are bad, but one's attachment to them. All sin is idolatry of some sort, i.e., treating things--or, in older parlance, creatures--as God.
p. 143 - "Poverty, then, prepares man's spirit for that union with God to which it aspires."
p. 145 - "...the paramount importance to the soul of an undistracted vision of reality."
- "The true rule of poverty consists in giving up those things which enchain the spirit..."
isaiah 40:31
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
