Corrie

“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“What we choose to speak about and how we speak about it are part of the message we send to each other and the larger culture we create.”
― Hannah Anderson, All That's Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment

“When we encounter someone who holds a viewpoint we don’t agree with, we can begin to view their whole existence through the lens of our disagreement with them. Instead of getting to know them and engaging their ideas, we assume that we already know them because we know where they stand on a certain political or religious question. And the degree to which we disagree with them on this question becomes the degree to which we will disrespect and disregard their humanity. They become our cultural enemy with whom we can’t imagine having anything in common. We can’t imagine that they, like us, are people who love their families, walk their dogs, work hard at their jobs, enjoy a good book, and might just be working toward the common good (even if we disagree about what “good” looks like). By separating ourselves into categories of “us” and “them,” we can justify mocking them, misrepresenting their views, and (in extreme cases) condoning violence against them. But “when we engage in dehumanizing rhetoric or promote dehumanizing images,” writes sociologist Brené Brown, “we diminish our own humanity in the process.”6”
― Hannah Anderson, All That's Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment

“If, however, we spend our days talking about good, worthy, glorious things, there is the strong likelihood that our lives will be filled with good, worthy, glorious things.”
― Hannah Anderson, All That's Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment