I'm currently reading Book 1 of The Crosswicks Journal loaned to me by a family friend. Thanks to Ellen for another fantastic read! So much of this powerful book resonates with me as a person as it does for the writer in me. There are so many quotes I could use here, but this is the one that carries the most meaning for me at this time in my life. In a previous post, I wrote about the death of compassoin and the loss of the awareness that we all--man and beast--share this world. I was so happy to come across these words in A Circle of Quiet:
Our children have never known
a world without machines: dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, electric
beaters, blenders, furnaces electric pumps, saws, computers--there are more
machines than we can possibly count; beware, beware, lest they take us over....
We can't absorb it all. We know too much, too quickly,
and one of the worst effects of this avanlanche of technology is the
loss of compassion....
We are lost unless we can recover compassion, without
which we will never understand charity. We must find, once more, community, a
sense of family, of belonging to each
other....
Marshall McLuhan speaks of the earth as being a
global village, and it is, but we
have lost the sense of family
which is an essential part of a village....
Compassion is nothing one feels with the intellect alone.
Compassion is particular; it is never general....
General compassion is useless.... What would E.M. Forster think? To leave a friend and save the group is not, after all, the particular. It is the general once again.
*Visit beloved A Wrinkle in Time author Madeleine L'Engle's official website: http://www.madeleinelengle.com/
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