Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Fitz Allison quote:


from "Fear, Love, & Worship"--

(pp. 26-27) "There is, of course, a complex 'mixedness' about our wills and our spirits. We are not totally afraid, although there is in each of us a measure of unrest and uneasiness about ourselves. In respect to almost everything important in our lives is an ambivalence, a mixed feeling, one both positive and negative. We want both to stop and not to stop smoking (so true! - JAZ); we want to be different and yet we do not want to change. We want to be less afraid, but not enough to be less afraid. This restlessness, uneasiness, and dissatisfaction with ourselves is the only qualification for worship. The struggle that a man has with himself causes his heartburn and his tragedy, but at the same time it is a symptom of his grandeur. It is the only thing in man that can be appealed to and relied upon. Man's restless dissatisfaction with himself is, at its deepest point, an indication of spiritual need and must be faced and appreciated as such. Our Lord indicates this when he said that the well have no need of a physician, but they who are sick. We cannot cure ourselves. We cannot enter into the womb to be born again. We cannot make ourselves into new people. But we can see something of our sickness and bring ourselves to a place where the physician can heal us, where he who made us can remake us, where we can be born again."

(Fitz is second from the right in above photo)

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