Micah Balu

“The garden is far less likely to grow weeds if we have been planting flowers.”
― N.T. Wright, God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath

“Without friendship, the ring never would have made it, and Middle Earth would have been destroyed. Actually, we never would have imagined Middle Earth in the first place because, without friendship, Tolkien never would have finished writing the story. He said that it was only C. S. Lewis’s steady encouragement that kept him writing. Perhaps this is why the theme of friendship stands out so prominently in the story. In Tolkien’s day, authors only produced “fairy stories” (as they were called) for children, not adults. But Tolkien wrote for adults too. He eventually wrote The Lord of the Rings, but it was only because of his relationship with Lewis. Two years after Lewis died, Tolkien reflected on Lewis’s role in his life: The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not “influence” as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my “stuff” could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought the L. of the R. to a conclusion.13 Lewis and Tolkien experienced true friendship. They knew that their experience was both wonderful and rare in their culture. This is why both men wrote to promote the joys of true friendship in their own day—Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, and Lewis in The Four Loves.”
― Drew Hunter, Made for Friendship: The Relationship That Halves Our Sorrows and Doubles Our Joys

“But I am not impressed with America’s progress. I am not impressed that slavery was abolished or that Jim Crow ended. I feel no need to pat America on its back for these “achievements.” This is how it always should have been. Many call it progress, but I do not consider it praiseworthy that only within the last generation did America reach the baseline for human decency. As comedian Chris Rock says, I suppose these things were progress for white people, but damn. I hope there is progress I can sincerely applaud on the horizon. Because the extrajudicial killing of Black people is still too familiar. Because the racist rhetoric that Black people are lazier, more criminal, more undeserving than white people is still too familiar. Because the locking up of a disproportionate number of Black bodies is still too familiar. Because the beating of Black people in the streets is still too familiar. History is collapsing on itself once again.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business