There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding. ... If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.
Marilynne RobinsonI don't think I would worry about an oversaturation of information if it was indeed information. It is the slovenly, hasty traffic in clichรฉ and sensationalism and bad reasoning that bothers me. I love finding arcane primary texts on the web. The people who think to put them up are heroes of mine.
Marilynne Robinson... but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.
Marilynne RobinsonGod does not need our worship. We worship to enlarge our sense of holy, so that we can feel and know the presense of the Lord, who is with us always. He said, Love is what it amounts to, a loftier love, and pleasure in a loving presence.
Marilynne RobinsonWe are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature.
Marilynne RobinsonI'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us.
Marilynne Robinson