Big Beautiful Dreamer
ridiculously contented
I read this bit this morning and thought it apropos to Hyde Park.
"There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. We know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relation to our fellow human beings. The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation.
"It means that we at once fall into the worst blunders of our opponents. The person who despises another will never be able to make anything of that person. Nothing that we despise in the other person is entirely absent from ourselves.
We often expect from others more than we are willing to do ourselves. Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about human frailty and temptability? We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
"The only profitable relationship to others -- and especially to our weaker brothers and sisters -- is one of love, and that means the will to be in community with them. God did not despise humanity, but became a human for humanity's sake."
"There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. We know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relation to our fellow human beings. The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation.
"It means that we at once fall into the worst blunders of our opponents. The person who despises another will never be able to make anything of that person. Nothing that we despise in the other person is entirely absent from ourselves.
We often expect from others more than we are willing to do ourselves. Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about human frailty and temptability? We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
"The only profitable relationship to others -- and especially to our weaker brothers and sisters -- is one of love, and that means the will to be in community with them. God did not despise humanity, but became a human for humanity's sake."
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers from Prison
--1943-1945
Letters and Papers from Prison
--1943-1945
