“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
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“Deception is nowhere more common than in religion. And the persons most easily and damningly deceived are the leaders. Those who deceive others are first themselves deceived, for not many, I think, begin with evil intent. The devil, after all, is a spiritual being. His usual mode of temptation is not an obvious evil but to an apparent good. The commonest forms of devil-inspired worship do not take place furtively at black masses with decapitated cats but flourish under the bright lights of acclaim and glory, in a swirl of organ music.”
― Under the Unpredictable Plant an Exploration in Vocational Holiness
― Under the Unpredictable Plant an Exploration in Vocational Holiness
“Thomas Merton wrote, “it is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not ‘what he ought to be.’ If we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: in our impatience we will do away with him altogether.”50”
― Under the Unpredictable Plant an Exploration in Vocational Holiness
― Under the Unpredictable Plant an Exploration in Vocational Holiness
“Every congregation is a congregation of sinners. As if that weren’t bad enough, they all have sinners for pastors.”
― Under the Unpredictable Plant an Exploration in Vocational Holiness
― Under the Unpredictable Plant an Exploration in Vocational Holiness
Nicholas’s 2025 Year in Books
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