"No more pretending for him! He was completely and openly a mess.  Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other."

-Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son (pg. 118)

"When I realized how long I'd been out and how close I'd come to leaving it forever, our little home seemed to glitter like cheap jewelry. I was overjoyed not to be dead.  Generally the closest I ever came to wondering about the meaning of it all was to consider that I must be the victim of a joke.  There was no touching the hem of mystery, no little occasion when any of us thought--well, speaking for myself only, I suppose--that our lungs were filled with light, or anything like that.  I had a moment's glory that night, though.  I was certain I was here in this world because I couldn't tolerate any other place."

-Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son (pg. 34)

"He'd wasted his entire life.  Such people were very dear to those of us who'd only wasted a few years."

-Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son (pg. 31)

"What the hell is his problem?" Richard asked.
"It doesn't matter what his problem is, until he's fully understood it himself," the man said.

-Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son (pg. 20)

"His blood bubbled out of his mouth with every breath.  He wouldn't be taking many more.  I knew that, but he didn't, and therefore I looked down into the great pity of a persons's life on this earth  I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the pity.  I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real."

-Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son (pg. 8)

There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us."

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 245)

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 243)

Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 209)

"There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet more, and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth only to want."

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 198)

"For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?" In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a serparate language in each of us, also a serparate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful an what is acceptable--which I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.

The thoughtlessness of any individual, when it is seen to be in service to the mindfulness of the Lord, cannot justify anger.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 194)

There are two insidious nothions, from the point of view of Christianity in the modern world. (No doubt ther eare more than two, but the others will have to wait.) One is that religion and religious experience are illusions of some sort (Feuerbach, Freud, etc.), and the other is that religion itself is real, but your belief that you participate in it is an illusion. I think the second of these is the more insidious, because it is religious experience above all that authenticates religion, for the purposes of the individual believer.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 145)

How do you tell a scribe from a prophet, which is what he clearly takes himself to be? The prophets love the people they chastise, a thing this writer does not appear to me to do.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 142)

I heard a man say once that Christians worship sorrow. That is by no means true. But we do believe there is a sacred mystery in it, it's fair to say that...I believe there is a dignity in sorrow simply because it is God's good pleasure that there should be. He is forever raising up those who are brought low. This does not meant hat it is ever right to cause suffering or to seek it out when it can be avoided, and serves no good, practicle purpose. To value suffering in itself can be dangerous and strange, so I want to be very clear about this. It means simply that God takes the side of sufferers against thos who afflict them.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 137)

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?...each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists ofour behavior, and the reaction of God to usm ight be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgemental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? Which how much assurance do we perform it?

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 124)

That is how life goes--we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are born, it seems, for all the help we can give them. Some of them seem to be a kind of wildnerness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord's. I need to bear this in mind.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 119)

I have always liked the phrase "nursing a grudge," because many people are tender of hteir resentments, as of the thing nearest their hearts.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 117)

The history of the church is very complex, very mingled. I want you to know how aware I am of that fact. These days there are so many people who think loyalty to religion is benighted, if it is not worse than benighted. I am aware of that, and I know the charges that can be brought against the churches are powerful. And I know, too, that my own experience of the church has been, in many senses, sheltered and parochial. In every sense, unless it really is a universal and transcendent life, unless the bread is the bread and the cup is the cup everywhere, in all circumstances, and it is a time with the Lord in Gethsemane that comes for everyone, as I deeply believe...It all means more than I can tell you, so you must not judge what I know by what I find words for....I hope you will put yourself in the way of the gift.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 114)

When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean the most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 102)

I know you will be and I hope you are an excellent man, and I will love you absolutely if you are not.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 73)

Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was. But I know she did look right into my eyes. That is something. And I'm glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize ther eis nothing more astonishing than a human face...It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But his is the truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 66)

One lapse of judgement can quickly create a situation in which only foolish choices are possible.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 60)

As I was walking up to the church this morning, I passed that row of big oaks by the war memorial...and I thought of another morning, fall a year or two ago, when they were dropping their acorns thick as hail almost. There was all sorts of thrashing in the leaves and there were acorns hitting hte pavement so hard they'd fly past my head. All this in the dark, of course. I remember a slice of moon, no more than that. It was a very clear night, or morning, very still, and then there was such enegy in the things transpiring among those trees, like a storm, like travail. I stood there a little out of range, and I thought, It is all still new to me. I have lived my life on the prairie and a line of oak trees can still astonish me.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 56-57)

A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard in that way. There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even to the most private thought--the self that yeilds the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord. That is a remarkable thing to consider.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 45)

It seemes to me some people just go around looking to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last hundred years or so."

...Then just six months later I baptized her. And I felt like asking her, "What have I done? What does it mean?" That was a question that came to me often, not because I felt less than certain I had done something that did mean something, but because no matter how much I thought and read and prayed, I felt outside the mystery of it.

Every prayer seemed long to me at that age, and I was truly bone tired. I tried to keep my eyes closed, but after a while i had to look around a little. And this is something I remember very well. At first I thought I saw the sun setting in the east; I knew where east was, because the sun was just over the horizon when we got there that morning. Then I realized that what I saw was a full moon rising just as the sun was going down. Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them. It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them. I wanted my father to see it, but I knew I'd have to startle him out of his prayer, and I wanted to do it the best way, so I took his hand and kissed it. And then I said, "look at the moon." and he did. We just stood there until the sun was down and the moon was up. They seemed to float on the horizon for a quite a long time, I suppose because they were both so bright you couldn't get a clear look at them. And that grave, and my father and I, were exactly between them, which seemed amazing to me at the time, since I hadn't given much thought to the nature of the horizon.

My father said, "I would never have thought this place could be beautiful. I'm glad to know that."

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 14-15)

Well, see and see but do not perceive, hear and hear but do not understand, as the Lord says. I can't claim to understand that saying, as many times as I've heard it, and even preached on it. It simply states a deeply mysterious fact. You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 7)

A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine. Above all, mind what you say. "Behold how much wood is kindled by how small a fire, and the tongue is a fire." --that's the truth.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 6)

It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see that in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 5)

What are we to do then about what seem increasing divisions in the church centered around the efforts of some Mormons to join in the multicultural and feminist revolution? One frequent response is to quote Christ's command, "I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye ar not mine" (D&C 38:27), as a way of condemning those whose otherness and interest in diversity seem to bring division. I don't believe, however, that Christ means "Be all alike in the Church or I will not accept you," but rather "Be like me by accepting each other in the Church, even if you're not all alike." He is asking us to be one in our acceptace of diversity, not as a denial of diversity.

As evidence for this crucial interpretation, I offer the following: Just before making that command, Christ pleads, "Let every man esteem his brother as himself." He then retells a story of a man who has twelve sons and who claims to be no respecter of persons, a just man, but nevertheless, "saith unto the one son: Be thou clothed in robes and sit thou here; and to the other: Be thou clothed in rags and sit thou there (D&C38:25-26)...Finally, Christ concludes, "This I have given unto you as a parable, and it is even as I am. I say unto you be one." Clearly, to be like Christ rather than the man in the parable, we need to learn to love unconditionally and treat equally all the members of our church and human families, no matter how different they are.

-Eugene England, Making Peace (pg. 190-191).

"There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto."

-Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (pg. 41)

"They were in good spirits, scrubbed and combed, clean shirts all. Each foreseeing anight of drink, perhaps of love. How many youths have come home cold and dead from just such nights and just such plans."

-Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (pg. 38)

The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didn't make it to suit everybody, did he?

I don't believe he much had me in mind.

Aye, said the old man. but where does a man come by his notions. what world's he seen that he liked better?

I can think of better places and better ways.

Can ye make it be?

No.

No. It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he don't want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there.  It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it.  You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?

I don't know.

Believe it.

-Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (pg. 19)

"I know that small acts of valor may be all that is visible of great movement of courage within. For we are all the elect, each one of us, and we are embarked upon a journey to something unimaginable. We do not know what will be required of us, and we have nothing to sustain us but the counsel of our fathers."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 132)

"You said there were some things you couldn't deserve. Things so sweet or so precious or even just so common to all humanity that there was no deserving them they just were given and you couldnt question them whether they fell to you or to someone else you couldnt question them. Maybe that dead boy doesn't deserve to be buried with his family. But Ben does he have to? Does he have to?"

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 126)

"Where are the others? Where are the others. Oh I've had time in great abundance to reflect upon that terrible question. Because we cannot save ourselves unless we save all ourselves."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 113)

"Well, it wasn't the good Lord's plan that I ever heard of for men to be gone all hours of the day and night."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 45)

"I know nothing of God. But I know that something knows. Something knows or else that old man could not know. Something knows and will tell you. It will tell you when you stop pretending that you know."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 97)

"My experience is limited....I am no longer reduced by these mysteries but rather am one more among them."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 97)

"I know that evil exists. I think it is not selective but only opportunistic."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 97)

"Nothing is ever finally arrived at. The journeyman becomes a master when he masters the journeyman's trade. He becomes a master when he ceases to wish to be one."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 96)

"I'd pretend ignorance to get you to stay. If I thought you could be fooled. But only people with wants can be fooled and you have none."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 95)

"Trouble comes to a house it comes to visit everbody."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 71)

"The reason the stonemason's trade remains esoteric above all others is that the foundation and the hearth are the soul of human society and it is that soul that the false mason threatens."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 66)

"I'd read a great deal in the Old Testament before it occurred to me that it as among other things a handbook for revolutionaries. that what it extolls above all else is freedom. There is not historian and no archaelogist who has any conception of what stonework means. The Semitic god was a god of the common man and that is why he'll have no hewn stones to his altar. He'll have no hewing of stone because he'll have no slavery."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 65)

"All trades have their origin in the domestic and their corruption in the state."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 65)

"All honors are empty and none more than honorary masonry. Because there is nothing that will separate from the work itself. The work is everything, and whatever is learned is learned in the doing...And if it is true that laying stone can teach you reverence of God and tolerance of your neighbor and love for your family it is also true that this knowledge is instilled in you through the work and not through any contemplation of the work."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pgs. 64-65)

"I seen they was some things that folks couldnt lie about. The facts was too plain. And what a man was worth at his work was one of them things. It was just knowed to everbody from the lowest to the highest and they wasnt no several opinions about it."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 49)

"Stone aint so heavy as the wrath of a fool."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Stonemason (pg. 48)