Half Past Noon

The idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families free but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic, of one man one house–this remains the real vision and magnet of mankind. The world may accept something more official and general, less human and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-hearted woman who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one; Socialism may be the world’s deliverance, but it is not the world’s desire.

Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

We have been trying to remember humanity; to re-member humanity in the rigorous liturgical sense–to exercise anamnesis, the heart of the Eucharistic command and privilege: When you do this, remember me. Which is to say, Stay with history, Make something of it, by falling within its main line of action, the breaking of bread, the sharing of wine. Make a community whose life will also be available to history.

Daniel Berrigan, America Is Hard to Find

To love at all is to be vulnerable.

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change.

It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, p. 121:

People who didn’t live pre-Internet can’t grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. I stopped in the middle of the SAT to memorize a poem, because I thought, This is a great work of art and I’ll never see it again.

Mary Karr – best interview ever

The beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions. We may pass them by, preoccupied with our more important tasks, as the priest passed by the man who had fallen among thieves, perhaps—reading the Bible.

Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is his principles, his conscience and his virtue, who is unwilling to sacrifice all this when he is called to responsible action. … The ultimate question is how we are to extricate ourselves heroically from the affair, not how the coming generation is to live.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer