Posts

Showing posts from 2011

Comments that caught my attention

"Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose—all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable." The definition comes from the famed archbishop William Temple "Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself." Susanna Wesley (Letter, June 8, 1725) John Wesley's own working definition of sin (although he did write that all transgressions of divine will need God's forgiving grace): "A willful transgression of a known law of God"

G K Chesterton- On the Modern Man

‘But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marr

"The Obsolescence of Ethics."

“Ours is an age where ethics has become obsolete. It is superceded by science, deleted by philosophy and dismissed as emotive by psychology. It is drowned in compassion, evaporates into aesthetics and retreats before relativism. The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow caused it all, is the victim, and not the perpetrator of the crime.” - Robert Fitch, Christianity and Crisis: A Journal of Opinion, 1959

Letter from Pilate to Gaius (Author - unknown)

It suddenly closed in on me Gaius, the impact of how trapped I was. The proud arm of Rome with all its boast of justice was to be but a dirty dagger in the pudgy hands of the priests. I was waiting in the room, Gaius, the one I use for court, officially enthroned with cloak and guard when they let this Jesus in. Well Gaius, don’t smile at this, as you value your jaw, but I have had no peace since the day he walked into my judgment hall. It’s been years but these scenes I read from the back of my eyelids every night. You have seen Caesar haven’t you? When he was young inspecting the legion. His arrogant manner was child-like compared to that of the Nazarene. He didn’t have to strut, you see. He walked toward my throne; arms bound but with a strident mastery and control that by its very audacity silenced the room for an instant and left me trembling with an insane desire to stand up and salute. The clock began reading the absurd list of charges. The priestly delegations punctuating these

Drums – For the kick of it (literally)

Image
What started off for me, was the challenge – “can I do it” and for me that has been for a lot of things, both good and bad... and this, a perfect example - both good and bad… The good – I got around to doing this and the bad, once I knew all works, I don’t have the enthusiasm anymore to finish it. To put this info along with the pictures and all this info is a drag; let me be honest about it. But, if I can help someone else or give them the nudge to start doing something like this, guess, all this effort makes some sense in a way. This is how it all started: Was doing a whole bunch of home recordings and was browsing the web to see if I can find a DIY kinda stuff for a drum kit, (got tired of using the drum loops that came along with my recording software). I found this Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxeI3fNIsOk&feature=related) and I thought to myself, man this is cool and there the million dollar question for me – “can I do it?” Looking though the comments on the

Pedal board

Image
Well, I thought I was done with my pedal board and boy, was I wrong... I redid the pedal board but now with some major changes along with a fantastic mounting option by Johnny from Johnny Shredfreak (http://www.johnnyshredfreak.com/) [trust me they are worth it]. Added in a power supply designed "exclusively" for me by my dear friend Santosh from Fides Electronics.... Added in some NEEEEW pedals - Reverb - Digitech, Compressor - Marshall and a sweet sweet sounding Chorus - Rocktron Tsunami. After a lot of measuring, measuring and measuring, followed by a lot of drilling and mounting.. Then came the tiding up and viola .. lo and behold, the Pedal board....