David Given Schwarm

Married, Father, United

George Bernard Shaw

The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation.
Glory of the Aposticha of the Feast

Make glad, O Jerusalem, and all ye who love Sion, keep feast. Today the ancient bond of the condemnation of Adam is loosed. Paradise is opened to us: the serpent is laid low; for of old he deceived the woman in Paradise, but now he seeth a woman become the Mother of the Creator. O…
33. Standing Still

Which is the nearer to you, your name or your person?Which is the more precious, your person or your wealth?Which is the greater evil, to gain or to lose? Great devotion requires great sacrifice.Great wealth implies great loss.One who is content can never be ruined.One who stands still will never meet danger.These are the ones…
St. Seraphim of Sarov, Spiritual Instructions

The body is a slave, the soul a sovereign, and therefore it is due to Divine mercy when the body is worn out by illness: for thereby the passions are weakened, and a man comes to himself; indeed, bodily illness itself is sometimes caused by the passions.
47. Difficult Recognition

Easy are my words to hear, and also to practice.Yet none is able to understandnor yet to grasp them. What I say springs from the ageless,the supreme Tao.No knowing Tao, no one can know me. Those who listen to me are few.What can they hear? To the world I am outwardly poor,but I carry a…
Go

I have been reading about Go and starting to play a little–I am really enjoying the game, but I do not think that I am very good.
Abba Tithoes

The way of humility is this: self-control, prayer, and thinking yourself inferior to all creatures.
Occupation

You cannot manufacture sin, you can only generate temptation
Forgetting To Remember by Peter Kuper

This was a great graphic novel about growing up. There is this nice quotes: One of the main points I’m making is that as we age, we forget or distance ourselves from our past behavior…Especially after we have kids. Which I really related to–the opposite is equally problematic. the book was very good.
Spook Country by William Gibson

This had a lot in common with Pattern Recognition, which is not a bad thing. The language was awesome (“clam shelling”, etc.), the art descriptions was amazing, the synchronization I felt while reading was enlightening. I really liked this book a lot. I also read it in 22 hours, which was fun.