"He gives an account, with Episcopal self-assurance, of what Christians believe, which I, who have long answered to that description, read with true astonishment. . . . I feel I must appeal here to the kindness of my non- and post-Christian readers. Regarding all such supposed issues of faith, believe me, to the best of my knowledge the bishop speaks for himself."
Marilynne Robinson, "The fate of ideas: Moses," in When I was a child I read books (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 98-99 (95-124).
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Have you heard the one "about the two [Scottish] Highlanders watching the evacuation of the beaches at Dunkirk"?
"'Aye, Jock,' says one to the other,
'if the English surrender, it'll be a long war.'"
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Tip of the iceberg
"In these years of the Popular Front, the Soviet killings and deportations went unnoticed in Europe. Insofar as the Great Terror was noticed at all, it was seen only as a matter of show trials and party and army purges. But these events, noticed by specialists and journalists at the time, were not the essence of the Great Terror. The kulak operations and the national operations were the essence of the Great Terror. Of the 681,692 executions carried out for political crimes in 1937 and 1938, the kulak and national orders accounted for 625,483. The kulak and the national operations brought about more than nine tenths of the death sentences and three quarters of the Gulag sentences."
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 107.
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 107.
Dostoevsky on Katyn

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 138, citing Vladimir Abramov, The murderers of Katyn (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1993), 46, and Stanisław Swianiewicz, In the shadow of Katiń (Calgary: Borealis, 2002), 63, 66.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
"Should not a bride love, and above all, Love's bride?"
"Quidni amet sponsa, et sponsa Amoris?"
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo 83.5, as translated in the Office of readings for 20 August, Liturgy of the hours. Cf. the 1895 translation by Eales (Cantica canticorum: eighty-six sermons on the Song of Solomon, trans. Samuel J. Eales (London: Elliot Stock, 1895), 510): "How could she do otherwise who is the Bride, and the Bride of Love? How can Love fail to be loved?" Opera omnia, ed. Leclercq, Talbot, & Rochais, vol. 2 (1958), pp. 300-302; Bernhard von Clairvaux: Sämtliche Werke, lateinisch-deutsch 6, p. 616, l. 29.
"the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him" (Liturgy of the hours).
"He loves us that he may be loved by us, knowing that those who love Him become blessed by their love itself" (Eales).
Ibid., sec. 4.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo 83.5, as translated in the Office of readings for 20 August, Liturgy of the hours. Cf. the 1895 translation by Eales (Cantica canticorum: eighty-six sermons on the Song of Solomon, trans. Samuel J. Eales (London: Elliot Stock, 1895), 510): "How could she do otherwise who is the Bride, and the Bride of Love? How can Love fail to be loved?" Opera omnia, ed. Leclercq, Talbot, & Rochais, vol. 2 (1958), pp. 300-302; Bernhard von Clairvaux: Sämtliche Werke, lateinisch-deutsch 6, p. 616, l. 29.
"the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him" (Liturgy of the hours).
"He loves us that he may be loved by us, knowing that those who love Him become blessed by their love itself" (Eales).
Ibid., sec. 4.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Robinson on the importance of "repent[ing] from the perspective of the [villain]"

Marilynne Robinson, "Austerity as ideology," in When I was a child I read books (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 56-57.
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