Sublime

Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety,

The alternative is not escapism; it is a refugee spirituality—unsettled yet hopeful, tenuous but searching, eager to find the hometown we’ve never been to.

Most people are broadly communitarian: small-c conservative in their approach to matters of state and small-s socialist on public services, fair play and hard work. They cherish liberty but value authority too.

Today, blindness to the truth about the human person has led to a crisis of family, community, and opportunity. But then as now, we see clearly the Church’s latest intellectual and cultural challenge: not primarily the nature of God or redemption, but of man and human flourishing.

I also believe that for the sake of discipleship it is crucial to immerse oneself in a community of practice that exhibits the reformative potential we’ve been describing. Your heart is at stake.

I went back to [Hannah] Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and reread sections of it. I was looking for a clue as to what she meant by “the banality of evil,” which she defines as a “kind of thoughtlessness.” I guess I think of evil as in some way connected with self-deception. —Morris