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| (Angels Appearing before the Shepherds by Henry Ossawa Tanner , ca. 1910) |
“By seeking him earnestly and prayerfully, by letting go of our ideologies and our obsession with security and comfort, which all too often function as idols, consciously and subconsciously, that block grace and reject true vision. We must wake up—and part of this awakening will demand the self-honesty to see how far we have been indoctrinated by false concepts of man’s nature. Of particular concern to me is the way we in the West form our opinions and judgments about all things human and social, and how our perceptions of practically everything have been warped by materialism. We must understand that the sane and reasonable ground (where surely most of us want to be) can never be the precise mid-point on a horizontal line between two ideological or perceptual poles. Poles are always shifting. Cultural poles, with all their power to influence politics, are especially unreliable. And the poles in men’s minds are more unstable than these. The true center is above. Right choices, right politics, healthy cultural life, will flow from that re-orientation to the hierarchical nature of the cosmos. May I say it again? — The true center is above.”
~Michael O’Brien
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