thinking about that one post about america that’s like “I love you jazz and national parks and baseball and 50s diners” and feeling the same way about (the good part of) the culture of being christian. i love you gregorian chant and vivaldi’s gloria and handel’s messiah and unclouded day and didn’t my lord deliver daniel and the oh hellos’ dear wormwood and praise to the lord the almighty and jesus loves me. i love you ancient ethiopian churches dug into the earth and st basil’s in red square and la sagrada familia and washington national cathedral and little wooden frame churches in hidden corners of every country and two or three gathered where no one can build a building. i love you the concept of the imago dei and the ending of roman exposure of infants and the abolition of the british slave trade and the battle hymn of the republic (“as he died to make men holy let us die to make men free”!) and the calling of men to love and sacrifice for women rather than rule them and caring for those everyone else left behind even if it means inconvenience or personal cost. i love you stained glass windows and elaborate wall mosaics and icons and the gospels as painted by rembrandt and the pictures in children’s bibles. i love you gerard manley hopkins and john donne and (sometimes) john milton and george herbert and ts eliot and mary oliver. i love you lucy pevensie and frodo baggins and meg murray and the narrative of the universe in which what is weak has been chosen to shame what is strong. i love you self-sacrifice in roman coliseums and at the stake and in nazi-occupied europe and every day in small acts of love for fellow human beings and small denials of hatred and self-centeredness and cruelty. i love you, concept that ultimate beauty and truth and justice and goodness and love are the center and the end of the entire universe.
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