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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Hope Lonergan

Good Morning!

Lately I鈥檝e been revisiting The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick. If I鈥檓 stirred by a particular passage, I turn down the corner of the page to remind myself to come back to it later 鈥� whether to mark it down in one of the notebooks I鈥檝e been keeping since I was 7 years old or incorporate it into my stand-up.

In an essay about William James (historian, philosopher and psychologist) Hardwick writes about his aversion to 鈥淕ermanic system-making鈥� and 鈥渢emperamental repugnance to the processes of exact thought鈥�. As she surmised: 鈥淸He] feared losing touch with the personal, the subjective, the feelings of real human beings more than he feared being logically or systematically faulty鈥�.

I think I signposted this page because I鈥檝e always respected people who exhibit an openness, a broadness of tolerance, over the argumentative and pedantic discourse you find online. Whether it鈥檚 the Left interpreting behaviour in the most uncharitable way possible or the Right insisting on quantifiable evidence for the immeasurable parts of everyday life, there鈥檚 a false certainty about the opinions you find online at odds with James鈥檚 freedom from narrow restrictions.

(Having said that, I鈥檝e made online friends with people who hold all sorts of beliefs by bonding over our shared love of wrestling. The other day I received a recipe for a Banana Cream Pie from a gentleman who said he could suplex three men at a time.)

With this in mind. God, thank you for encouraging radical tolerance 鈥� an attitude that鈥檚 often lacking in the concrete convictions of those participating in The Discourse. Help us to keep our minds open and our hearts enthusiastic; let鈥檚 embrace the complexity of our affections.

Go lightly.

Amen.

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