This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Stephen Larsen, fully H. Stephen Larsen
Inevitably we learn through changing our perspectives. Consideration of life against the background of death brings its wonder and mystery to the surface.
Consideration | Death | Life | Life | Mystery | Wonder | Learn |
Of late, the factual world has been buried under agnosticism, and its mystery has deepened as human society has come to cover a wider territory. Usually the statements of people who have witnessed the same incident contradict one another. An extraordinary incident that shocks the whole society always contains an eternal mystery.
Douglas Meeks, also M. Douglas Meeks
The mystery of idolatry is that persons reflect what they possess. Idolatry is being possessed by a possession and thereby refusing God’s claim on oneself and shirking one’s responsibility toward others in the community.
God | Mystery | Responsibility |
René Margritte, fully René François Ghislain Magritte
Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.
Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, aka Vatican II
The Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these religions… In Hinduism, men probe the mystery of God and express it with a rich fund of myths, and a penetrating philosophy… In the various forms of Buddhism the basic inadequacy of this changing world is recognized and men are taught with confident application how they can achieve a state of complete liberation… The Church also regards with esteem the Muslims who worship the one, subsistent, merciful and almighty God… They venerate Jesus as a prophet… Given the great spiritual heritage common to Christians and Jews, it is the wish of this sacred Council to foster and recommend a mutual knowledge and esteem.
Church | Esteem | God | Knowledge | Men | Mystery | Nothing | Philosophy | Sacred | World | Worship | God |
Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell
If death is one mystery, life is another, greater one… We can only fee awe before a mystery that both is what we are and surpasses our understanding.
Serving God is the way to gain knowledge of Him. God is the source of life, knowledge – everything – and gaining a close, intimate knowledge of God through our service to Him is the ultimate experience. He is the ultimate mystery – and the ultimate discovery.
Discovery | Experience | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mystery | Service | God |
The use of creativity as an instrument for personal and social gain is by no means the whole story. In its deeper philosophical implications, creativity is a quest for meaning. It is an attempt to penetrate the mystery of the self, and perhaps the even greater mystery of Being.
Mystery is not the denial of reason but its honest confirmation: reason, indeed, leaves inevitability to mystery… mystery and reality are the two halves of the same sphere.
A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson
Religious worship is only as it were a postern by the side of the great portals of beauty and nobility and truth. One whose heart is filled with a yearning mystery at the sight of the starry heavens, who can adore the splendor of noble actions, courageous deeds, patient affections, who can see and love the beauty so abundantly shed abroad in the world… he can at all these moments draw near to God, and open his soul to the influx of the Divine Spirit.
Beauty | Deeds | God | Heart | Love | Mystery | Nobility | Soul | Spirit | Truth | World | Worship | Beauty |
Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage.
Experience | Man | Mystery | Religion |