Identity

What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

We're not free until we're bound to be free, until there's something that has a claim upon us other than our self, our aspirations, our psychological and intellectual and sexual tics and yearnings and desires for community.

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.

Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny.

Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror.

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! Source: A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1943) LISTEN RELATED CONTENT Discover this poem’s context and related poetry, articles, and media. POET Rudyard Kipling POET’S REGION England SCHOOL / PERIOD Victorian SUBJECTS Religion, Living, Faith & Doubt, Coming of Age OCCASIONS Graduation, Farewells & Good Luck POETIC TERMS

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

In every way that is unimportant let them make us Chaldeans.

When Africans become Christians, their African-ness is converted, completed and resolved, not replaced with...something else.

You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness . Shasta: "Why did you wound Aravis?" Aslan: "Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no-one any story but his own." C.S.

The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because he made us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own. A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell. Put first things first and we get second things thrown in. C.S. Lewis (a letter)

When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him. He has a million reasons for being anywhere; just ask him. If you listen, he'll tell you how he got there--how he forgot where he was going and then he woke up. If you listen, he'll tell you about the time, he thought he was an angel and dreamt of being perfect. And Then he'll smile with wisdom, content that he realized the world isn't perfect. We're flawed because we want so much more. We're ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had.

Christianity answered that historical challenge by reorientation of the world view...(African) people sensed in their hearts that Jesus did not mock their respect for the sacred nor their clamor for an invincible savior, and so they beat their sacred drums for him until the stars skipped and danced in the skies. After that dance, the stars weren't little any more. Christianity helped Africans become renewed Africans, not remade Europeans.

Today is your day, your mountain is waiting, so get on your way. I like nonsense - it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope... and that enables you to laugh at all of life's realities. Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

"It doesn’t happen all at once.", said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. Thats why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

What we are (our self or personal identity) is partly the result of the Creation (the image of God), and partly the result of the fall (the image defaced). The self we are to deny, disown, and crucify is our fallen self, everything within us that is incompatible with Jesus Christ (hence Christ's command, 'let him deny himself and follow me'). The self we are to affirm and value is our created self, everything within us that is compatible with Jesus Christ (hence his statement that if we lose ourselves by self-denial we shall find ourselves). True self-denial (the denial of our false, fallen self) is not the road to self-destruction, but the road to self-discovery. So, then, whatever we are by creation, we must affirm: our rationality, our sense of moral obligation, our masculinity and femininity, our aesthetic appreciation and artistic creativity, our stewardship of the fruitful earth, our hunger for love and community, our sense of the transcendent mystery of God, and our inbuilt urge to fall down and worship him. All this is part of our created humanness. True, it has all been tainted and twisted by sin. Yet Christ came to redeem and not destroy it. So we must affirm it. But whatever we are by the fall, we must deny or repudiate: our irrationality; our moral perversity; our loss of sexual distinctives; our fascination with the ugly; our lazy refusal to develop God's gifts; our pollution and spoliation of the environment; our selfishness, malice, individualism, and revenge, which are destructive of human community; our proud autonomy; and our idolatrous refusal to worship God. All this is part of our fallen humanness. Christ came not to redeem this but to destroy it. So we must deny it.

We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. Where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

The psychology is complex. Even as rowers must subsume their often fierce sense of independence and self-reliance, at the same time they must hold true to their individuality, their unique capabilities as oarsmen or oarswomen or, for that matter, as human beings. Even if they could, few rowing coaches would simply clone their biggest, strongest, smartest, and most capable rowers. Crew races are not won by clones. They are won by crews, and great crews are carefully balanced blends of both physical abilities and personality types. In physical terms, for instance, one rower’s arms might be longer than another’s, but the latter might have a stronger back than the former. Neither is necessarily a better or more valuable oarsman than the other; both the long arms and the strong back are assets to the boat. But if they are to row well together, each of these oarsmen must adjust to the needs and capabilities of the other. Each must be prepared to compromise something in the way of optimizing his stroke for the overall benefit of the boat—the shorter-armed man reaching a little farther, the longer-armed man foreshortening his reach just a bit—so that both men’s oars remain parallel and both blades enter and exit the water at precisely the same moment. This highly refined coordination and cooperation must be multiplied out across eight individuals of varying statures and physiques to make the most of each individual’s strengths. Only in this way can the capabilities that come with diversity—lighter, more technical rowers in the bow and stronger, heavier pullers in the middle of the boat, for instance—be turned to advantage rather than disadvantage.

Now it came as a searing revelation that his father had not felt safe enough to live by that same simple proposition, that he had kept his heritage hidden painfully away, a secret to be ashamed of, even in America, even from his own beloved son.

You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details.

Aslan: "Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no-one any story but his own."

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

Ove had never seen a man as proud as his father was that night. He was eight years old and decided that night he would never drive any car but a Saab. Bookmark - Page 43 · Location 561

Had Ove been the sort of man who contemplated how and when one became the sort of man one was, he might have said this was the day he learned that right has to be right. But he wasn’t one to dwell on things like that. He contented himself with remembering that on this day he’d decided to be as little unlike his father as possible.

Since his father’s death he had begun more and more to differentiate between people who did what they should, and those who didn’t. People who did and people who just talked. Ove talked less and less and did more and more.

Afterwards it was only memories for Ove, and a lack of them for Rune. And there were very likely people who thought one could not interpret men’s feelings by the cars they drove.

Rolf Backman. My father. Because I hope I am unlike you in the smallest possible number of ways.

 "All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

‘There is more about you than meets the eye, as I said of him long ago.’ Frodo wondered if the remark meant more than it said.

And the memory of Boromir, of the dreadful change that the lure of the Ring had worked in him, was very present to his mind, when he looked at Faramir and listened to his voice: unlike they were, and yet also much akin.

I wonder if he thinks he’s the hero or the villain? (Samwise speaking of Gollum) THE RETURN OF THE KING

Along the generations, human nature itself, with its vast and mysterious amalgam of capacities to think, feel, supervise, love, create, respond, and act virtuously —that is, with its vast capacities for imaging God —has become the main carrier and exhibit of corruption. Human nature, says the Formula of Concord, has been despoiled of its powers by original sin. The image suggested by this language is that of stripping —stripping a tree of its bark, an animal of its hide, or an enemy army of its arms and provisions. To do these things is to remove the skin that protects against outside invaders and keeps one’s innards from spilling out. In other words, to despoil is to remove that which preserves integrity. 40

Human nature, says the Formula of Concord, has been despoiled of its powers by original sin... To do these things is to remove the skin that protects against outside invaders and keeps one’s innards from spilling out. In other words, to despoil is to remove that which preserves integrity... Mockery takes dead aim at our staunchest natural defense and tries to blow it away. Mockery aims to shred human dignity and therefore to despoil its victim in a specially devastating way.

Reformation documents offer a number of images for corruption: it is a despoiled nature, a diseased root, a contaminated spring, a foul heart. 43 According to these documents, we are wrong at the core. A bad strain has gotten into the stock so that we now sin with the ease and readiness of people born to the task. After the fall we sin by second nature: we are “born sinners” as some folk are born athletes. This fact, empirical as well as biblical, lies behind a broad consensus on original sin. Although, partly because of the silence of Scripture, Christians of various theological orientations differ on central issues in the doctrine of original sin —for example, how a child acquires the fateful disposition to sin, whether this disposition is itself sin, how to describe and assess the accompanying bondage of the will44 —they agree on the universality, solidarity, stubbornness, and historical momentum of sin. That is to say, all serious Christians subscribe to the generic doctrine of corruption, the centerpiece of which is the claim that even when they are good in important ways, human beings are not sound.

She is a person of character consistency, a person who rings true wherever you tap her. She keeps promises. She weeps with those who weep and, perhaps more impressively, rejoices with those who rejoice. She does all these things in ways that express her own personality and culture but also a general “mind of Christ” that is cross-culturally unmistakable.

Of course, the cradle of such pity often turned out to be a mental hospital, and the school for such reeducation a concentration camp —places at least as confining and dehumanizing as any conventional prison. But at least none of the inmates was to blame for being there. Koestler found all this blamelessness progressively disturbing. “Before long it began to become clear that those whom we do not blame we do not regard as responsible. Those whom we do not regard as responsible we do not see as fully human. And those whom we do not see as fully human we are willing to twist and manipulate to suit our own convenience.” 94

Before long it began to become clear that those whom we do not blame we do not regard as responsible. Those whom we do not regard as responsible we do not see as fully human. And those whom we do not see as fully human we are willing to twist and manipulate to suit our own convenience.

sow a thought, and reap a deed; sow a deed, and reap another deed; sow some deeds, and reap a habit; sow some habits, and reap a character; sow a character, and reap two thoughts. 95 The new thoughts then pursue careers of their own, but they, plus their produce, also intersect and cross-fertilize with similar life cycles from hundreds and thousands of other persons. All these persons exist in families and other group systems that they influence and that influence them. Hence the progress of both good and evil is more like a spiral than a shuttle and, more than that, like waves of intertwined and self-replicating spirals.

Chapter 1 we saw that sin qualifies as the worst of our troubles because, among other things, it corrupts what is peculiarly human about us. Sin attaches to intention, memory, thought, speech, intelligent action —to all the special features of personhood —and transforms them into weapons. CHAPTER 5 - Parasite

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. For this reason the gravest question before the church is always God himself, and the most portentous fact about anyone is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. Were we to extract from anyone a complete answer to the question: 'What comes into your mind when you think about God?' we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man.

We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

Man is a mystery. If you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time.

My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. I am very fortunate in having a wife who likes being a woman, which means that she likes men, not elderly babies.

Like and equal are not the same thing at all.

People are more than just the way they look.

Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.

When you focus on what is taken (dust), what is the human being? When you understand the One doing the molding, the human is great; indeed he is nothing because of the material and great through the honor.

Listen! My beloved! Behold, he is coming, climbing on the mountains, leaping on the hills!

To the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful….

You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone. The new has come.

The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father.

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain… for he gives to his beloved sleep.