Mary Roll

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature … the assurance that

Kurt Vonnegut, talking about when he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:

“Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of

The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was... The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

“God doesn’t plant lawns. He plants meadows.

But we belong to a Church that, currently, values lawns--their sameness, their conformity, the ease with which they can all be cut to the same height, watered on schedule, and replaced by new turf if necessary. (And against which it is easy to spot dandelions.)

All organizations are limited in their

Do Your Best. Then Do This.

Daily Stoic Emails

It doesn’t have to be this way. The world could be so much fairer, the safety net stronger. We could take better care of people, we could make life easier for parents, we could make it easier to afford a home. We could make things more color blind, we could adjust for past evils like slavery and

“I’m pro-Israel AND pro-Palestine. I’m anti-Hamas AND anti-Netanyahu. I’m pro-peace AND anti-terrorism. I support a ceasefire AND releasing all the hostages.”