This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Make philosophy thy journey, theology thy journey’s end: philosophy is a pleasant way, but dangerous to him that either tires or retires; in this journey it is safe neither to loiter nor to rest, till thou hast attained thy journey’s end; he that sits down a philosopher rises up an atheist.
Romanticism is the expression of man's urge to rise above reason and common sense, just as rationalism is the expression of his urge to rise above theology and emotion.
A theology - any theology - not based on spiritual experience is mere panting - religious breathlessness.
Experience | Theology |
The fact of our being able to form abstract or universal ideas is, in itself, a proof of the immateriality, or, as it is technically called, the spirituality of the soul, a proof that the soul is, in its essence, independent of matter.
Abstract | Ideas | Soul | Spirituality |
To glorify God is to be engaged in a concrete spirituality that refuses to draw marked distinctions between sacred and secular, contemplation and deed, theology and ethics.
Contemplation | Ethics | God | Sacred | Spirituality | Theology | God | Contemplation |
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil.
Conduct | Evil | Good | Hell | Theology | Will | World | Wrong |
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
Therapy offers explanations; spirituality offers forgiveness.
If vices are diseases, they cease to be vices, and theology in sending the drunkard or the gambler to the physician, relinquishes its last connection with reality: the ethical task.
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
The core paradox that underlies spirituality is the haunting sense of incompleteness, of being somehow unfinished, that comes from the reality of living on this earth as part and yet also not-part of it. For to be human is to be incomplete, yet year for completion; it is to be uncertain, yet long for certainty; to be imperfect, yet long for perfection; to be broken, yet crave wholeness. All these yearnings remain necessarily unsatisfied, for perfection, completion, certainty, and wholeness are impossible precisely because we are imperfectly human – or better, because we are perfectly human, which is to say humanly imperfect.
Better | Earth | Paradox | Perfection | Reality | Sense | Spirituality | Wholeness | Yearnings |
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
Stories reveal a spirituality that views life not as a problem to be solved, but as a mystery to be lived.
Life | Life | Mystery | Spirituality |
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
Truth, wisdom, goodness, beauty, the fragrance of a rose – all resemble spirituality in that they are intangible, ineffable realities.
Beauty | Spirituality | Truth | Wisdom |