Fighting without expectation of victory

Posted on by albrooke
In re-reading The Lord of the Rings, I have been struck by the determination of the Fellowship (particularly Frodo) to press on without any reason to believe in the final success of the mission.  F. Scott Fitzgerald had something to say about that:
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Pasting It Together,” Esquire, March 1936.

It is a nearly necessary characteristic for the criminal defense attorney as well — many, of course, have been driven to drink, instead.

Vocation, 1

Posted on by albrooke
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC.
This is, of course a wonderful idea, but it can only be true in aspiration, or in the Kingdom, or in Heaven.  In the moment when you labor in the vineyard of God (or Goldman Sachs), it is likely that you will miss the sublime in the midst of the tedious, the mundane, and the dull.  God is, nevertheless, also at work, and the sweat of your brow and the pain of your life is—truly—redeemable.

Regeneration

Posted on by albrooke

There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man.

How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoi, “Three Methods Of Reform” in Pamphlets 29 (1900, trans. A. Maude).

And who can accomplish this work?