This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The deeper question about remedies is not whether ancient religious forms can reform and thus provide these remedies, but whether new forms of nature-related spirituality might emerge that cohere with a modern evolutionary/ecological worldview, and could provide a basis for environmental concern and action... I believe there is strong evidence that such religion is emerging and gathering strength.
Evidence | Question | Reform | Religion | Spirituality |
For "ignorance is the mother of devotion," as all the world knows.
For ignorance is the mother of devotion, as all the world knows.
Sickness is the mother of modesty, as it puts us in mind of our mortality, and while we drive on heedlessly in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear, and brings us to a sense of our duty.
Tell my mother I stopped feeling frightened once I told myself they couldn't inflict half as much pain on me as she suffered when she gave birth to me.
Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
After prayer, on working days, I must go presently about some work or exercise that may be of some profit, and of all other things take heed of idleness, the mother of all vices. Towards eleven (if company and other more weighty causes will permit) I may meditate a little and call to mind how I have spent the morning, asking God grace to spend the afternoon better.
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Forget thy affliction, and cease supplication, Recall thy release from Egyptian rod, The hand is not short that hath laid earth’s foundation, Who stretched out the heavens remaineth thy God. And at thy due season the glory that dwelleth In Zion shall rest on thy head that great day, When moonlight as sunlight in radiance welleth And sunlight shall glow with a sevenfold ray.
Mother |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Unworthy am I of all the mercies and all the truth Which Thou hast wrought for Thy servant. Verily, O Lord my God, will I thank Thee For that Thou hast given me a holy soul, Though by my deeds I have defiled it, Polluted and profaned it with my evil inclination. But I know that if I wrought wickedly, I harmed but myself, never Thee. In sooth, at my right hand my fierce inclination As an adversary standeth, Allowing me no breathing-space to establish my tranquillity. Oft have I purposed with double bridle to lead him, From the sea of his lusts to dry land to restore him, But I could not prevail. My devices he baulked, made profanities flow from my lips. I think thoughts of simplicity, he fabricates guile and iniquity, I am for peace, and he is for war, To the point that he made me his footstool, And even in peace-time shed the blood of war. How oft have I sallied forth to combat against him, And set in battle-array My camp of service and repentance, And placed the host of Thy mercies beside me for auxiliary, For I said, if my evil inclination Shall come to one camp and shall smite it, Then the camp that is left shall escape. As I thought, so it was. For temptation has routed me and scattered my forces, So that there is nothing left me but the camp of Thy mercies. But yet I know that by these I shall overcome it, And they shall be unto me better than a city of refuge. Peradventure I shall prevail and smite it and drive it away.
Art | Cunning | Discipline | Distress | Evil | Father | God | Good | Judgment | Law | Light | Mother | Plenty | Rest | Soul | Spirit | Teach | Time | Wisdom | Hardship | Trouble | Art | God |
Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, aka Vatican II
Whatever were our opinions about the Council’s various doctrines before its conclusions were promulgated, today our adherence to the decisions of the Council must be wholehearted and without reserve;…. …The council was something very new; not all were prepared to understand and accept it. But now the conciliar doctrines must be seen as belonging to the magisterium of the Church and, indeed be attributed to the breath of the Holy Spirit.
Body | Church | Day | Doctrine | Faith | Life | Life | Man | Mother | Sacred | Truth |
In Koln, a town of monks and bones, And pavement fang'd with murderous stones, And rags and hags, and hideous wenches, I counted two-and-seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The River Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth whash the river Rhine.
Eternal | Evil | Father | Grace | Health | Hope | Love | Mother | Reverence | Strength |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
No people in all history paid a higher price for freedom. And no people have done so much to advance the dignity of man. We are called materialistic. May be so…but our materialism has made our children the biggest, tallest, most handsome, and intelligent generations of Americans yet. They will live longer with fewer illnesses, learn more, see more of the world, and have more success in realizing their personal dreams and ambitions than any other people in any other period of our history - because of our materialism…I think on our side of civilization and on the other side is the law of the jungle…We all have to recognize that this country has been handed the responsibility, greater than any nation, to preserve some 6000 years of civilization against the barbarians.
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
Middle age is when you're faced with two temptations and you choose the one that will get you home by nine o'clock.
Age | Era | Government | People | Reform | Relationship | Will | Government |
Believing in yourself takes courage. Facing the future takes hope. Carry both in your heart.
The threat of coercion is part of the authorization we give to the traffic police, for example, to prevent accidents at dangerous intersections. Not only do we want that threat to inhibit the impulses of other drivers, we also look to it at times to bridle out own.
Father | Learning | Mother | Psychoanalysis | Relationship |
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the bay.
If you can fill the unforgiving minute / With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, / Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, / And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
The illuminated life can happen now, in the moments left. Die to your ego, and become a True Human Being.
The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.