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Quotations I love: P. D. James on pain and love

Lynne Baab • Tuesday February 23 2021

“The world is a beautiful and terrible place. Deeds of horror are committed every minute and in the end those we love die. If the screams of all earth’s living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the stars. But we have love. It may seem a frail defence against the horrors of the world, but we must hold fast and believe in it, for it is all that we have.” —P. D. James (1920-2014)

These are the last four sentences of P. D. James’s last book, The Private Patient, published in 2008. The setting...

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Quotations I love: Become what you already are

Lynne Baab • Thursday February 18 2021

“The Christian indicative statement is not ‘This is what you ought to be.’ The Christian imperative is not ‘Now be as much like this as possible.’ Instead, the indicative is ‘You are already thus; your true life is this.’ And the imperative is ‘Enter upon your possession.’ In the familiar epigram so often used to describe the Christian position, it is a matter of ‘Become what you already are’; and that is a strikingly different approach from ‘Try to be a bit better than you are.’” —C. F. D. Moule [1]

During Lent in my childhood, I would often give up candy. This...

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Quotations I love: Eugene Peterson on anything goes in prayer

Lynne Baab • Friday February 12 2021

A few weeks ago, after a blog post on prayer, a friend wrote to me: “I do intend to pray, and these days I cry out to the Lord many times during the course of each day, but I’m having a tough time being intentional about prayer, including making time for prayer and what I pray for.” She wrote about her desire to learn “habit stacking,” always a great idea. Habit stacking might involve praying for sick friends every time you hear an ambulance or praying a psalm right after you brush your teeth each night.

The most common thing I hear...

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Quotations I love: the consolation of imaginary things

Lynne Baab • Wednesday February 3 2021

“The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.” —Roger Scruton (English philosopher, 1944-2020, author of Art and Imagination, 1974).

My friend is telling me how much she loves West Wing. She tells me: “Often at bedtime, I get out one of my West Wing DVDs and watch an episode or two, just because I want to spend time with those people.”

A few weeks later, I am reading A Memoir of Jane Austen, written in 1870 by her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh. He writes about some of the favorite characters in the Jane Austen novels, “who have been admitted as familiar guests to the...

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