It’s Sunday. There’s little we can do about that. I am reading Angela Duckworth's Situated, which, as listeners of this episode know. I quite like. But there’s very little one can do to change the situation of a Sunday, which can hit you like a sniper. I tried renaming it Friday but it didn’t work. (What we need is a seven-cent nickel).1
The morning reading didn’t come into focus, despite the volume of material. But some out of context quotes for you in the hopes that looking at them this way will squeeze some meaning out of them for me:
“the fact of a woman traveling alone had created a tense solicitousness that felt to her like hatred.” -- Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson
“human nature is weak, and the kindly support and wise advice of one whom we trust often enables us to accept more perfectly what we already know and see in an obscure way.” -- Spiritual Direction and Meditation, Thomas Merton
This did kick up something. I was interviewing a priest recently about the questions people ask him. (I’m big into questions these days). He said people don’t actually want answers. They just want him to be there while they come up with their own answer.
