Karsten Baldwin

“To keep faith in mortal life, then, is to remain vulnerable to a pain that no strength can finally master. Mortality is not only intrinsic to what makes life meaningful, but also makes life susceptible to lose meaning and become unbearable. The point is not to overcome this vulnerability but to recognize that it is an essential part of why our lifes matter and why we care. (49)”
― Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

“We must acknowledge the utter fragility of what holds our lives together—our institutions, our shared labor, our love, our mourning—and yet keep faith with what offers no final guarantee. This is the double movement of secular faith. (377)”
― Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

“We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves.”
― Wendell Berry, Nathan Coulter

“We are here to help you carry the sky when you have to, and we are here to help you put it down when you need to. Why else would anyone ever become a teacher?”
― Gary D. Schmidt, The Labors of Hercules Beal