Enemies of the people. That was a phrase he might omit. That was a catch phrase he would skip. That was one thing that sleeping with Maria had done. He had gotten to be as bigoted and hidebound about his politics as a hard-shelled Baptist and phrases like enemies of the people came into his mind without his much criticizing them in any way. Any sort of clichés both revolutionary and patriotic. His mind employed them without criticism. Of course they were true but it was too easy to be nimble about using them. But since last night and this afternoon his mind was much clearer and cleaner on that business. Bigotry is an odd thing. To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure that you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy.—Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Friday, January 22, 2016
"His mind employed them without criticism."
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
One soul to another
First you must forgive me, though, an old priest who has spent his whole life in relative comfort, for pointing out that your problem is nothing new. I don't see why it qualifies as a "crisis of faith" to notice that formerly good men, under strain, experience a breakdown of virtue and become bitter, angry, and less inclined toward God. Suffering can indeed incline one to sin, but it can also be turned to good (think of Isaac Jogues, or any of the martyrs, or any of the mystics, or Christ Himself).
Your attempts to bring transgressions to command attention are salutary. But as for your religious duties, remember these suspected transgressions, if real, are but the eruptions of sin. Not sin itself. Never forget that, lest you be inclined to lose your pity for human weakness. Sin is a lonely thing, a worm wrapped around the soul, shielding it from love, from joy, from communion with fellow men and with God. The sense that I am alone that none can hear me, none can understand, that no one answers my cries, it is a sickness over which, to borrow from Bernanos, "the vast tide of divine love, that sea of living, roaring flame which gave birth to all things, passes vainly." Your job, it seems, would be to find a crack through which some sort of communication can be made, one soul to another.--Phil Klay, "Prayer in the Furnace," Redeployment (2014)
Thursday, January 14, 2016
'a forest of boredom'
"Then calm yourself. There is much time. What a day it is and how I am contented not to be in pine trees. You cannot imagine how one can tire of pine trees. Aren't you tired of the pines, guapa?"
"I like them," the girl said.
"What can you like about them?"
"I like the odor and the feel of needles under foot. I like the wind in the high trees and the creaking they make against each other."
"You like anything," Pilar said. "You are a gift to any man if you could cook a little better. But the pine tree makes a forest of boredom. Thou hast never known a forest of beech, nor of oak, nor of chestnut. Those are forests. In such forests each tree differs and there is character and beauty. A forest of pine trees is boredom. What do you say, Inglés?"
"I like the pines too."—Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Saturday, January 2, 2016
The path of the living
Monastic time truly does lie close to eternity, said Elder Innokenty, but they are not equal. The path of the living, O Amvrosy, cannot be a circle. The path of the living, even if they are monks, has been opened up because, as one might ask, how could there be freedom of will if there is no way out of a vicious circle? And even when we replicate events in prayer, we do not simply recall them. We relive those events once again and they occur once again.--Eugene Vodolazkin (trans. Lisa C. Hayden), Laurus (2015)
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