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Look, it's Cinderella's carriage!

Not much, just to say I'm reading the Brothers Karamazov and love it so far. It's about a thousand pages, which is a bit intimidating, but it's pretty fast going and I think I can knock off a hundred pages a day. And I came across this passage which I thought was really interesting-

...but I don't think that miracles ever confound a realist. Nor is it miracles that bring a realist to religion. If he is an unbeliever, a true realist will always find the strength and ability not to believe in a miracle, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact, he will rather disbelieve his own senses than than accept that fact. Or he may concede the fact and explain it away as a natural phenomenon until then unknown. In reality, it is not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles. Once a realist becomes a believer, however, his very realism will make him accept the existence of miracles. The apostle Thomas said he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said: "My Lord and my God!" Was it a miracle that made him believe? Most likely not. He believed only because he wanted to believe, and possibly he already believed in the secret recesses of his being while he was saying, "Except I shall see, I will not believe."

Which of course made me think of this Bible verse, John 12:37-38-

Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: "Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"

Which is cool. And to finish off, I've been thinking of doing a media fast for the summer (no tv or movies or internet) just because I'm kind of tired of having my life sucked out of me by American Idol and AccioBrain. I'm not decided on the details yet but if I am quite suddenly silent for a long time you know why. :-)

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