In these dark times there must be many who feel tempted to despair when they see the ruin of the hopes of peace and progress that inspired the Liberal idealism of the last century, and the perversion of the great achievements of human knowledge and power to serve the devilish forces of destruction. Never, perhaps, has a civilization suffered such a total subversion of its own standards and values while its material power and wealth remained almost intact, and in many respects greater than ever.
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Dan Barber on Creating Beyond Oneself
There's a real advantage to creating a cuisine, a menu, where the vectors don't all point at you, at the chef, where the dish that you're eating or the place that you're at points out to something larger.
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Guardini on the Anticipation of Returning
Do you think of the afternoon on the edge of the forest where the buzzards had their nest? They glided off into the blue distance. The eye focused on their circlings. The inner life was concentrated upon the eye and crarried aloft by the force of the clear and soaring power; our whole being had a vision of the fullness of space. In the far distance the mountain ranges rose up in clear outline, and behind them the land that I had not seen for twenty years was waiting. I realized that if I now went back there as a man it would mean a great deal for me.
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“Petty Frustrating Crap” and the End of Inconvenience
All sacred relationships are formed in the crucible of inconvenience. Family. Marriage. Lifelong friendship. Religious community. None of it is convenient. Shoot, not even book clubs or bowling leagues are convenient. It’s no coincidence that our culture is coming to view them as increasingly unnecessary. A truly radical transformation in what we mean by “society” and how we experience others is already underway.
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Dostoyevsky on Isolation
To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Every one will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go through the period of isolation.
