David Given Schwarm

Married, Father, United

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.
Abba Pimen

A man may seem to be silent, but if his heart is condemning others, he is babbling ceaselessly. But there may be another who talks from morning till night and yet he is truly silent, that is, he says nothing that is not profitable.
2. Opposites

When one speaks of beautyas being beautiful,ugliness is at once defined.When goodness is seen to be good,evil is at once apparent.So having and not havingmutually give rise to one another,as do difficulty and ease,far and near, high and low.
The Fool

The Fool does not shade himself from the light–that is really an idea that I can get behind.