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Our culture [has] lost a sense of tragic vision in regards to nature -- we naturally assume that unless some active force comes along and makes things bad, that they will be good. This could not be farther from a traditional view of nature. While neo-pagans are sure that being "in tune" with nature would be a blissful and pleasant state, real pagans of the ancient world saw the natural forces that were bound up with their gods as capricious, sometimes cruel, and almost always unconcerned with the impact of their actions upon mortals. We as Christians see nature as having been created by God and being something that He saw as good. Yet in a fallen world, I don't think we'd be far off in taking a fairly tragic vision, similar to the ancients, of how we relate to nature and what "nature's way" is. This also comes up in the current debate over same sex marriage, where I've on a number of occasions had people tell me that if attraction towards members of one's own sex is "not a choice" but instead something "natural", then obviously same sex marriage must be a good thing and what God intended. It would be cruel, it is argued, if God allowed some people to have such an inclination but did not allow it to be fulfilled through marriage...A tragic vision seems an essential means of coping with the world as we find it. More Greeks and Norse, please. - Darwin Catholic

Love that is less than sacrificial love is only sentimentality.
- Janice Connell

Should the whole frame of earth by inward throes / Be wrenched, or fire come down from far to scorch / Her pleasant habitations, and dry up Old Ocean, in his bed left singed and bare, / Yet would the living Presence still subsist Victorious, and composure would ensue, / And kindlings like the morning--presage sure / Of day returning and of life revived. - From The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth

They saw in that moment when reality burst through the artifice and irrelevance of every day and everything. The remains of Charles Gábor have no time to plead, to maneuver for position.. - Arthur Philips in the novel "Prague"

Budapest was in what her mother used to call “the impatient time,” when children demanded winter’s end, and they hated the dark spaces between buildings that protected the last of the last season’s snow, stubborn and horrible little leftovers precisely the shape of their patron-shadows. - Arthur Philips, "Prague"

The eye of the historian detected in Paul VI some similarities to Clement XIV. - Rev. George Rutler, "Cloud of Witnesses"

From the citizen’s point of view, the disbursements from Social Security, Medicare, etc., are entitlements because they fulfill promises the government has made to the people. These promises were not conditional commitments, ones where the government said, “We’ll help you . . . if we can, and to the extent we can.” Congress cannot, therefore, appropriate a fixed amount for food stamps and hope that the eligible beneficiaries don’t run through that allotment before the end of the fiscal year. The people’s insistence that the government fulfill its promises to the dollar is not, of course, unrelated to the fact that the promises are beneficial to the individuals who receive what the entitlement programs. - From "Never Enough" by William Voegeli

Surrealism, to me, is like coffee. (Get ready to STG this!) I can't be drinking coffee all the time, but I do need something most mornings to wake me up. Surrealism does that. - Dylan of "Reluctant Draggard"