Bonnie’s Reviews > Island of the World > Status Update

Men speak of peace, but they do not know what they mean by it. Is it absence of conflict? Is it passivity and compromise? Is it the peace of the grave, or is it the peace of an active and wise love that doesn’t count the cost?

Supposedly, one must choose between war and world government. They do not understand that globalism will not change the fundamental human condition. Globalism is ultra-nationalism expanded to a planetary scale, without the safety measures of cultural and religious diversity.

Isn’t it a basic truth that we are brought to prayer only by passing through suffering? In this respect, the war was a blessing because it taught this generation how to pray, and it taught us the power of prayer. We learned that it was prayer that preserved us against impossible odds and only prayer that brought us independence. Dare I write these words—O God, how dare I write them?—yet I cannot be silent.

Language should be, he says, as fluid as love and as stable as marriage.

Have I ever been able to predict anything? No. The surprises of the Lord have not come to an end.

Absolutely brutal 😭

“Can a poem or a song defeat a tyrant?”

Defeat a killer, defeat atrocities, defeat the bottom falling out of the universe when you least expect it?

“Yes. Yes, it can, given enough time. When a work of art is both beautiful and true, man’s freedom is strengthened by it—both his interior need for freedom and his capacity to seek a rational understanding of it.”

“..Does culture have the power to liberate man from overwhelming historical forces?”
“Culture is the last refuge, the sanctuary, the human place in the midst of the surrounding dehumanization. Through the arts man is able to know himself, even if only on the intuitive level. He senses his own worth, even when he cannot articulate it.”

“I’m saying that through genuine culture man can know himself, even in nations where his identity is denied.”
“But what do you mean by genuine culture?”
“The beautiful and true! In music, in poetry, in literature, even in novels without political or historical references, we can apprehend what is not immediately known through rational thought or the accumulation of objective facts.”

“I see the light, but the walls imprison it.”
“The light has entered the prison. Nothing can keep it out.”
“If there is no window, the light cannot enter.”
“If there is no window, the light enters within you.”