Status Updates From A Rumor of Angels

“In either case one of the best things that can happen to us is to recall that, to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s suggestive term, all historical events are “penultimate,” that their ultimate significance lies in a reality that transcends them and that transcends all the empirical coordinates of human existence.” .

“Power is ultimately an illusion because it cannot transcend the limits of the empirical world. Laughter can—and does every time it relativizes the seemingly rocklike necessities of this world.”

The longest short book I've ever read!

Return to this work on
The social condition of contested belief/pluralism,
Plausibility structures,
Signals of transcendence (humor, justice, etc.).