There are some people who describe God as controlling, full of imperatives and proscriptions. Others describe God through expression – through architecture, music, poetry and art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first is a common sense (though fear-based) response to the decay of the human landscape in all its sinfulness. Nonetheless it is quite sublime in its appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The appeal of the latter arises out of beauty, out of the attractive pull of our highest ideals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We can\u2019t expect to attain either perfect virtue or perfect divinity. But it seems to me that it is our focus on matter – especially the lack of it – that moves us toward one or the other, toward the open spaces of cathedrals or the closeness of ordinary churches, toward the chorales of high mass or the hymns of homely sermons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not alone in the belief that if our focus shifted away from matter and more toward qualia, we would not need the sanctuary of churches or cathedrals. We would not feel the lack of, say, the best yard on the block, the most pairs of shoes, the newest toys, and all the rest of the stuff that the Joneses are commanding of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We would be content, or at least much more so. We would feel throughout most of every day the way we feel for the hour or so we occasionally feel sitting in a pew, whenever we happen to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are some people who describe God as controlling, full of imperatives and proscriptions. Others describe God through expression – through architecture, music, poetry and art. The first is a common sense (though fear-based) response to the decay of the human landscape in all its sinfulness. Nonetheless it is quiteContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-qualiens","post-5931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9QShd-1xF","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5931"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5938,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5931\/revisions\/5938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}