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“If at this most basic level, governments don’t reflect the dreams of the people they govern or serve their wills, you wonder what on earth governments are. Reading the papers, you get the sense of them as small, irascible groups within each capital—far more of them men than women—who behave in ways that under normal circumstances would land them in the slammer in no time flat. They seem to have a life and purpose of their own quite apart from the lives and purposes of anybody else. They are perpetually locked in desperate struggles with each other that have little if anything to do with the general human struggle to live and let live with as little fuss as possible. It’s we ourselves who have given them the power to pull the whole world down on all our heads, and yet we seem virtually powerless to stop them.”

“We’re also noticing how such a worldview now bleeds into the political sphere, when some demonize their political adversaries and define the next U.S. election in terms of “spiritual warfare.” As we approach the 2020 U.S. elections, expect more polarization and references to the “demonic” on the part of “spiritual warfare” warriors. Another good reason for all who embrace pluralism to be alarmed. Andre Gagne in Religion Dispatches. The ‘Spiritual Warfare’ Worldview of Trump’s Conspiracy Doctor Is Part of a Transnattional Movement”

“If happiness can prove elusive or fleeting over a lifetime, joy itself is not often mentioned at all today, except glibly. In his scholarly history of joy in the Western tradition, Adam Potkay affirms that ‘joy is a word we don’t use much anymore, at least not in secular contexts … And while joy has grown less common, still less do we now “rejoice.”’ From my earnest search through the indexes of all the books I have read over the last five years, including those on utopian thinking, I can see he is right.”

“She showed a way to penetrate mystery; which means, not to flood darkness with light so that darkness is destroyed, but to enter into darkness, mystery, so that it is experienced.”