@Lumi

As for making sense of the world and what’s happening, I don’t think it’s a matter of focusing on those things , but trying to get a sense of what is in between those things. Less attention to the individual pictures on the TV set, and more attention to what is happening on the ground. It has less to do with the news stories we may not be able to c... See more

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentr... See more

Every choice that we make individually and collectively is a kind of prayer that aligns us with a certain reality and a certain future. It's a declaration of what a human being does in this circumstance. It says, Here is who I want to be. Here is the world I want to live in.

How do I even write in a way that is appropriate to the moment, when the moment keeps changing? Trump wins (help people breathe), Carter dies (highlight an era where climate change was an accepted fact and a president told us to turn down the heat and wear a sweater), Musk takes power (techno-feudalism, getting off social media, reversion to the me... See more

"The amount of serendipity that will occur in your life is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you're passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated." https://t.co/KfFpouh7Dm

Merton’s reply was the most helpful letter I’ve ever received:

Dear Jim,

Thanks for the letter and for the awful, and illuminating, enclosure [about the civilian casualties in Vietnam]. I can well understand your sense of desperation. And the “bleak mood.” And also I am glad that you wrote about it. As you say, there are no clear answers, and you ca... See more