thinking faith was childish when I only meant that I’d been a child the last time I took it seriously

Q. You say you came back to religion “freely, as an adult, after 20-odd
years of atheism.” Can you describe your initial switch to atheism?
How old were you? Were there particular texts or experiences that
influenced your move away from religion?

A. Oh, it was just the usual teenage discovery that the world is a lot
larger than childhood’s ordering of it. I was in a church-going
family, and at thirteen or fourteen I started caring a lot more about
sex, music and politics than I did about God — and the box of
symbolism and stories I’d left behind seemed to shrink as I moved away
from it, until it was impossible to imagine ever fitting inside again.
In fact I made the classic mistake of thinking faith was childish when
I only meant that I’d been a child the last time I took it seriously.
I was never argued out of faith, it was much more passive than that —
and I wasn’t argued back in, either.

- Francis Spufford in New York Times interview
 http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/despite-everything-francis-spufford-talks-about-unapologetic/?_r=0

There are three things I cannot take in: non-dogmatic faith, non-ecclesiological Christianity and non-ascetic Christianity. These three - the Church, dogma and asceticism  - constitute one single life for me.

- Archimandrite Sophrony, letter to David Balfour (1945)

...on a scale of joy I weigh them

Hey, what do you deal in – sorrow?
What are you selling there – despair?
I’m a buyer and a dealer,
and I’m dealing and I’m wheeling
days and nights, and even moments:
on a scale of joy I weigh them,
buy them up and then resell them,
half are black
and half in blazes,
at fairs, in markets, and on highways
who should happen in my pathway,
in whoever’s path I happen
I count Mammon!…
I’m a buyer and a dealer
and I’m dealing and I’m wheeling…
What are you selling – corpses? Rags?
Or long-since-departed dads?
Hey, a buyer’s slipped a way,
he’s dying but will be reborn.
 (1917)

– Peretz Markish (translation Amelia Glaser)

Amor, ergo sum

.... there is certainly one underlying element that is fundamental to any understanding of human personhood, and that is the quality of love. Without love we are not human. It is love that lies at the heart of the human mystery, love that expresses the Christological and Trinitarian image within us, love that enables us to act as priests of the creation and mediators. During the early part of the seventeenth century, inaugurating a fresh era in philosophy, Rene Descartes chose as his point of departure the principle Cogito, ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am." He might have done better - since the human animal is far more than simply an animal that thinks - to have taken as his starting-point the affirmation Amo, ergo sum, "I love, therefore I am"; or better still, Amor, ergo sum, "I am loved, therefore I am." In the words of Fr Dimitru Staniloae, "If I am not loved, I am unintelligible to myself." As Paul Evdokimov sates, the greatest event between God and the human person - and we may add, between one human person and another - is to love and be loved. If we can make love the starting-point and end-point in our doctrine of personhood, our Christian witness in the twenty-first century will prove altogether creative and life-giving.

- Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Orthodox Theology in the Twenty-first Century (2012)

Александр Николаевич Волков - Гранатовая чайхона

http://tashkentpamyat.ru/volkov-aleksandr-nikolaevich-khudozhnik-.html

also: http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/333

Volkov, Aleksandr Nikolayevich
Pomegranate coloured chaikhana (Central Asian tea room with large divans)
1924
Oil on canvas
105 х 116

The name of the painting has a metaphorical sense. The pomegranate is
one of the most widespread motifs in the art and poetry of the Orient.
A chaikhana is the traditional place of relaxation and socializing in
Central Asia, where it is possible to spend the whole day, sipping tea
and without hurrying, thoroughly discussing all the news. It is not
just the name of the canvas that is metaphorical. The artist uses the
principle of creating an Uzbek ornament, where the drawing consists of
endless combinations of one and the same form. The constant change in
rhythms of the pattern creates an impression of variety. The
pomegranate fruit is itself the source of the composition's structure.
It is depicted as a real object, as the motif of the teapot, and as a
generalizing image, since even the figures of the people are perceived
through the contours and drawing of the pomegranate seeds. The
pomegranate colour, poured over the entire canvas, completes the list
of associations, creating a capacious symbol of the Orient.

Although, let us be honest, merely conversing with people who have gotten themselves hopelessly lost in this cold world, and what's worse, in their own selves, is not enough to transform them. For transformation, you need to show them hope, show them the opening to a new life, a new world, in which meaninglessness, suffering, and cruel injustice do not triumph, but where, reigning omnipotent over everything, are faith, hope, and love. And then you need not only show them this new world from afar, pointing towards it, but you need to bring them to thus world by yourself. You need to take them by the hand to the physical presence of The Lord God Himself. Only then will they recognize Him, the One Whom they have long truly loved deep inside their hearts, their one and only Creator, Savior, and Father. Only then will life truly be transformed.

- Archimandrite Tikhon, Everyday Saints and Other Stories

There's different and then there's different, but where's the true counter-cultural?

“I think church should be odd, the language should be a little different, the music should be a little different. You should know there is something about this that is a little different from the rest of your world, that we are entering into a sacred and holy place that should always have something to say about your actual life and about our world, but it is slightly odd. I think odd and holy are sometimes the same.”
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/274751/publisher_ID/40/