dil·et·tante

Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.

If the first mark of a true and living church is love, the second is suffering. The one is naturally consequent on the other. A willingness to suffer proves the genuineness of love.

She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.

Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone’s finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?

What they (movies) do on a fairly consistent basis is give you an experience of transcendence. They let you lose yourself in somebody else’s story.” What many churches have forgotten and preachers ignore, the movie theater recognizes: “story reigns supreme.

The blues is played to get rid of the blues