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.
-
-
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.
-
Frederic Harrison on Great Books and Little Books
Whether our neglect of the great books comes from our not reading at all, or from an incorrigible habit of reading the little books, it ends in just the same thing.
-
Mill on the Recognition of Sin
Orthodox Christians who are tempted to think that those who stoned to death the first martyrs must have been worse men than they themselves are ought to remember that one of those persecutors was St. Paul.
-
Andi Ashworth on Mercy and Unanswered Questions
For all that I cannot unravel or understand, mercy.
