I'm Going To Live Long Enough To

While We Pay Lip Service To The Virtues Of Reading, The Truth Is That There Is Still In Our Culture Something That Suspects Those Who Read Too Much, Whatever Reading Too Much Means, Of Being Lazy, Aimless Dreamers, People Who Need To Grow Up And Come Outside To Where Real Life Is, Who Think Themselves Superior In Their Separateness.

I Like To Say That My Mother Had A Very Ordinary Life. From The Outside It Didn't Look Like There Was Anything Particularly Special Or Wonderful About It, But When You Watch Somebody Hold On To That Life With Both Hands, It Makes You Think That Life Must Be Pretty Damn Good.

I Think At Every Moment In The Last Probably 100 Years, When The Institutional Church Had The Opportunity To Do The Right Thing, They Did The Wrong Thing. They're A Dying Institution In Many Parts Of The World Because They Refuse To Ordain Women Or Married People. And Now They're A Dying Institution Because Some Of Their Members Did Enormous Harm To Young People And Instead Of Responding Aggressively With Humility, And With Love, And With The Confession Of Wrongdoing, They Tried To Spin It As Though They Were A Political Party, And That's Just Deplorable.

But While Ignorance Can Make You Insensitive, Familiarity Can Also Numb. Entering The Second Half-century Of An Information Age, Our Cumulative Knowledge Has Changed The Level Of What Appalls, What Stuns, What Shocks.

The Church Does An Enormous Amount Of Good, And It Carries One Of The Most Valuable Messages Imaginable - That You Should Love Your Neighbor As Yourself, And That If You Have Two Coats You Should Give One To The Man Who Has None.