once more...

my amazon shipment came today. last time I picked up a David Dark book, i tried to blog about it and found myself wanting to quote entire pages. lots of entire pages. i despaired. now i have to say it again. David Dark's Everyday Apocalypse and, it appears, The Gospel According to America are simply some of the best things you can read if you're into reading. if you grew up a Christian in America, then these can form a valuable part of your redemption.

and...the man writes with the vocabulary and passion of G.K. Chesteron, with a refreshing lack of consideration for restrained pacing or gentle introduction to topics. he's a literary whirlwind and completely unpredictable.

"An emotional disorder has settled upon us, a habitual anger that passes itself off as normalcy, and it isn't just directed at whatever Democrat or Republican might strike us an appropriate scapegoat for all of life's problems. We eventually feel it for people (neighbors, coworkers, relatives) whose opinions fail to coincide with our own and strangers who don't drive the way we think they should, an impatience that makes clear of generous thinking difficult...I don't want [future generations] to inherit a militant ignoracnce that confuses anger for strength of character or the momentary silencing of somebody else with victory...As the witness of the Jewish Christian tradition makes clear, the anger of human beings against what they percieve to be evil and unjust will never produce the righteousness of God (although, as anger goes, it usually feels terribly effective when it has hold of us), and confession is the only hope for minds whirling with contradictory impulses and filled with thoughts of courage and honor and freedom but increasingly incapable of connecting dots or adding two and two together...

"Like discipleship, the practice of democracy is a widening of our capacities for moral awareness and an expansion of our sphere of respect. If we have a steadily narrowing vision of people to whom we're willing to accord respect or if the company we keep is slowy diminishing to include only the folks who've learned to pretend to agree with us, we can be assured that we're in danger of developing around ourselves a kind of death cult, a frightened, trigger-happy defensiveness that is neither godly nor, in the best sense, American."

and...there's lot's more. :)