Apt 23 Quotes

O hateful error, melancholy’s child. Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men The things that are not? O error soon22 conceived, 70      Thou never comest unto a happy birth, But kill’st the mother that engendered23 thee.

For six months following the accident, as the Sarcophagus was under construction, a team of courageous scientists from the V. I. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy re-entered Unit 4 as part of an investigation aptly named Complex Expedition.242

Ohio was an apt forum for this showdown. By 2016, 2.3 million people in the state—approximately 20 percent of the total population—received a prescription for opioids. Half of the children who were in foster care across the state had opioid-addicted parents. People were dying from overdoses at such a rate that local coroners had run out of room in which to store all the bodies and were forced to seek makeshift alternatives.

At first glance, young John Adams’s obsession with recognition seems odd. In contrast to the great mass of his contemporaries, his yearning was exceptional. Yet when Adams is compared to other high achievers of his generation, his behavior appears more normal. Young Washington sought recognition just as fervently, and he impatiently pursued a commission in the British army during the French and Indian War as the most rapid means of procuring attention. The youthful Thomas Jefferson dreamed of someday sitting on the King’s Council in Virginia, while Alexander Hamilton, born too late to soldier in the war in the 1750s, announced: “I contemn the grovling and condition of a Clerk or the like, to which my Fortune, &c., contemns me.” He wished for war, through which he could be catapulted into notoriety; his hero was James Wolfe, the British general who died in the assault on Quebec in 1759. Benjamin Franklin, who grew up earlier in Boston, exhibited the same industriousness and ambition that Adams would evince. He mapped out an extensive regimen of self-improvement, as did Adams, and found his role models in Jesus and Socrates. Adams, and many others who would subsequently play an important role in the affairs of early America, were the sort of men that historian Douglass Adair aptly describes as “passionately selfish and self-interested,” men who shared a common attribute, a love of fame.23

Ohio was an apt forum for this showdown. By 2016, 2.3 million people in the state—approximately 20 percent of the total population—received a prescription for opioids. Half of the children who were in foster care across the state had opioid-addicted parents.

May 2 The Passion of Patience Though it tarry, wait for it. Habakkuk 2:3 Patience is not indifference; patience conveys the idea of an immensely strong rock withstanding all onslaughts. The vision of God is the source of patience, because it imparts a moral inspiration. Moses endured, not because he had an ideal of right and duty, but because he had a vision of God. He “endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible.” A man with the vision of God is not devoted to a cause or to any particular issue; he is devoted to God Himself. You always know when the vision is of God because of the inspiration that comes with it; things come with largeness and tonic to the life because everything is energised by God. If God gives you a time spiritually, as He gave His Son actually, of temptation in the wilderness, with no word from Himself at all, endure; and the power to endure is there because you see God. “Though it tarry, wait for it.” The proof that we have the vision is that we are reaching out for more than we have grasped. It is a bad thing to be satisfied spiritually. “What shall I render unto the Lord?” said the Psalmist, “I will take the cup of salvation.” We are apt to look for satisfaction in ourselves—“Now I have got the thing; now I am entirely sanctified; now I can endure.” Instantly we are on the road to ruin. Our reach must exceed our grasp. “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect.” If we have only what we have experienced, we have nothing; if we have the inspiration of the vision of God, we have more than we can experience. Beware of the danger of relaxation spiritually.

April 23 The Worship of the Work Labourers together with God. 1 Corinthians 3:9 Beware of any work for God which enables you to evade concentration on Him. A great many Christian workers worship their work. The one concern of a worker should be concentration on God, and this will mean that all the other margins of life, mental, moral and spiritual, are free with the freedom of a child—a worshipping child, not a wayward child. A worker without this solemn, dominant note of concentration on God is apt to get his work on his neck; there is no margin of body, mind or spirit free, consequently he becomes spent out and crushed. There is no freedom, no delight in life; nerves, mind and heart are so crushingly burdened that God’s blessing cannot rest. But the other side is just as true—when once the concentration is on God, all the margins of life are free and under the dominance of God alone. There is no responsibility on you for the work; the only responsibility you have is to keep in living, constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your co-operation with Him. The freedom after sanctification is the freedom of a child, the things that used to keep the life pinned down are gone. But be careful to remember that you are freed for one thing only—to be absolutely devoted to your co-Worker. We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.

Hotchkiss was not a scientific gunner, as his straight-ahead, charge-’em-and-to-hell-with-the-consequences manner so aptly demonstrated in Winfrey Field the evening before. Semple, by contrast, was a canny veteran tactician. Close range was fine—if you could get there and deliver accurate fire without getting shot to pieces first—but what Hotchkiss failed to grasp was that artillery was most effective when it delivered a converging fire.

British Special Air Service’s motto of Who Dares Wins was a much more apt way of describing how she conducted business than the carpenter’s adage of measure twice and cut once.

I need to believe in something perfect and unchanging in this imperfect world. Humans are apt to make other humans into gods and being human they let them down. I sometimes think that inside everyone is a desire for a spiritual belief and sometimes it gets twisted. Why else would people worship, say, Hitler or Elvis Presley?

Early in the new millennium it became apparent to anyone with eyes to see that we had entered an informational order unprecedented in the experience of the human race. I can quantify that last statement. Several of us—analysts of events—were transfixed by the magnitude of the new information landscape, and wondered whether anyone had thought to measure it. My friend and colleague, Tony Olcott, came upon (on the web, of course) a study conducted by some very clever researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. In brief, these clever people sought to measure, in data bits, the amount of information produced in 2001 and 2002, and compare the result with the information accumulated from earlier times. Their findings were astonishing. More information was generated in 2001 than in all the previous existence of our species on earth. In fact, 2001 doubled the previous total. And 2002 doubled the amount present in 2001, adding around 23 “exabytes” of new information—roughly the equivalent of 140,000 Library of Congress collections.1 Growth in information had been historically slow and additive. It was now exponential. Poetic minds have tried to conjure a fitting metaphor for this strange transformation. Explosion conveys the violent suddenness of the change. Overload speaks to our dazed mental reaction. Then there are the trivially obvious flood and the most unattractive firehose. But a glimpse at the chart above should suggest to us an apt metaphor. It’s a stupendous wave: a tsunami.

Fear of Dragons Lawrence Kohlberg, who wrote some excellent material on levels of moral development, charted what each level of moral development was like, describing six distinct levels. He was clear about the difficulty of seeing reality, especially moral or spiritual reality. He concluded that we are incapable of understanding a stage more than one beyond our own. A third-level person can’t make sense of what someone on the fifth level is saying. It is meaningless. That’s what we’re up against when we preach the Gospel. Jesus, in Kohlberg’s schema, is a sixth-level person. Many people have not done their first-, second-, and third-level work of conscience. They’re really not bad-willed; they just can’t understand a higher, more complex moral understanding. I’ve had to accept this from some who attack preaching and teaching. They’re not necessarily ill-willed; they just have no idea where the Gospel is coming from. They have some growing to do yet. It really helps to understand this so we are less apt to be judgmental of them. Jesus meant what he said: “Forgive them, they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). The vast majority of people, according to Kohlberg, remain in the first levels of moral development. The Gospel of Jesus will always be a minority position, as will mystical Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism. If we’re not willing to be led through our fears and anxieties, we will never see or grow. We must always move from one level to a level we don’t completely understand yet. Every step up the ladder of moral development is taken in semi-darkness, by the light of faith. The greatest barrier to the next level of conscience or consciousness is our comfort and control at the one we are at now. Our first response to anyone calling us to truth, greatness, goodness, or morality at a higher level will be increased anxiety. We don’t say, “Isn’t this wonderful.” Instead, we recoil in terror and say, “I don’t know if I want to go there.” At the edges of medieval maps was frequently penciled the warning: “Here be dragons.” We confront these dragons when we approach the edge of our comfort level.