I re-read The Tortilla Curtain these last few days. If you haven't read it, it is a must-read. I am enchanted with the Chronicle's list of 100 new books this year. I see some goodies waiting there. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/20/RV831B46QJ.DTL
We attended a Christmas party yesterday, a gathering of old and new friends. There are so many ways to keep the heart light.
I have mentioned New Letters before. http://www.newletters.org/default.asp
I offer some of the words of Robert Stewart, the editor. I'm taking a part of his "Editor's Note," bringing you in, in the middle. I apologize if the "narrow gate" is unclear. This is a wonderful magazine to support by subscribing.
Robert Stewart:
"This morning, I heard a Jesuit priest celebrate an Austrian farmer by the name of Franz Jagerstatter, a husband with three daughters, and the only Roman Catholic in his town, in the early 1940's to declare himself anti-Nazi. When Jagerstatter asked Church authorities to explain the contradiction between Church teaching and the Church's own acquiescence to Hitler's policies, they couldn't. They said what others in their position have said over the years. They were following orders. Those orders formed the wide landscape of that time and place. In 1943, Jagerstatter refused service in Hitler's army and chose, instead, to go through the narrow gate - into prison, in his case, where the forces of the Third Reich cut off his head."
He goes on to say that Franz Jagerstatter has been beatified by the Church but not yet canonized.
He also offers these words of Rollo May in The Courage to Create.
Rollo May:
"To believe fully and at the same time to have doubts is not at all a contradiction. It presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment. "