A
Constant Message
Holiness is never fussy or sentimental. Neither is a good poem; it’s
ultimate realism. My evidence for this belief is that holiness endures,
persistent as a weed through the depredations of all the ages, throughout
all the terrors that we human beings can inflict on each other and have
inflicted over our history on this earth. Holiness prevails, and poetry.
Religion and poetry are among the most ancient of human activities, predating
even agriculture. And battered as they are today by secular indifference
or co-optation. . . by legalism, fundamentalism, or terrorism, by right-thinking
ideologies [or] tyrants; religion and poetry are with us still, still witnessing
to hope at the dawn of the 21st century. Both holiness and poetry [may
seem] anachronistic. . . [but they are] peculiar forces with a life of
their own in the face of the dog-eat-dog world we know too well, and as
necessary as breath, giving us the hope that evil does not have the last
word.
--from "Being
Real About Life"
an excerpt by Kathleen Norris
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