Up to Us
If you’re looking for a silver lining in these years of chaos and rancor, consider this: We now know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the calvary ain’t coming. We know that our elected officials,…
If you’re looking for a silver lining in these years of chaos and rancor, consider this: We now know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the calvary ain’t coming. We know that our elected officials,…
To pray the psalms with even half a heart was to be comforted and discomfited, set in motion, set in stillness, set free, set on edge, led outside, led within. –Daniel Berrigan, Uncommon Prayer: A…
Around the turn of the last century, a prominent London newspaper called The World put the following question to its readers, offering a prize for the best possible answer: “What’s wrong with the world?” Not the newspaper, of…
Even among the saints he has the air of a sort of eccentric, if one may use the word of one whose eccentricity consisted in always turning towards the centre. –G. K. Chesterton, from his…
on “Finding Your Book”
To become Christian is, fundamentally, to perceive that it isn’t just others who have scapegoats. And note that the two greatest Christians, the founders of the Church, Peter and Paul, were two converted persecutors. Before…
And how dare you say to your brother, “Let me take that splinter out of your eye,” when, look, there is a great log in your own? –The Gospel of Matthew, 7:4
A certain brother inquired of Abbot Pastor, saying: What shall I do? I lose my nerve when I am sitting alone at prayer in my cell? The elder said to him: Despise no one, condemn…
The more those thinking about throwing the first stone perceive the responsibility they would assume in throwing it, the greater the chance they will let their hands fall and drop the stone. ––René Girard, I…
And then a new light, less dazzling, no doubt, than that other illumination which had made me perceive that the work of art was the sole means of rediscovering Lost Time, shone suddenly within me. …