Lovable

You know what’s so funny and sad about us human beings? . . . We are constantly torn between the all-consuming desire to be loved and the terrifying fear of being known. Deep inside we don’t believe the two things can exist together, that if anyone really knew us, they would surely never love us, so we spend our whole lives concocting this wonderful, plastic shell that we fight like madmen to keep pristine. But eventually the plastic cracks and what is inside is a raw, quivering mass of imperfect humanity that has always been lovely and precious enough for God Himself to love.

–Earlene Fowler, Steps to the Altar*, p. 177.

*Although the title suggests a book about marriage, it is the name of a traditional American quilt pattern, and the book is a crime novel.

 

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Good questions

Whether you went to Holy Trinity Grammar School, P.S. 159 or Yeshiva Elementary, you learned in first grade that when you don’t tell the truth, it is called a lie. And telling a lie is wrong.

We learned that at school. We learned that at home. We learned that through our faith. And if somehow we needed even more reinforcement, watching Pinocchio’s nose grow and grow did the trick. Lying is wrong. Simple enough

Why is it that smart, powerful people, including presidents and people who work for presidents, who have all spent more days in church or synagogue and many more years learning about right and wrong and what constitutes lying, don’t seem to have a good handle on this simple concept?

So asks Susan Casey, a guest columnist in today’s Denver Post. Whole thing below the fold if the link has expired.

On the same page of that paper, Ed Quillen writes that the American people have been at some kind of war more often than not, but that we are fed up with being misled. That column is also below the fold in case the link expires.

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