Forego beauty for goodness

By foregoing beauty for goodness, power for love, grief for gratitude, by entreating the Lord for help to understand our hopes, for strength to resist our fears, we may receive a gentle sense of the holiness permeating the air.

“Under affliction or some sudden shock, he may feel temporarily as though he were on a desolate path, but a slight turn of his eyes is sufficient for him to discover that his grief is outweighed by the compassion of God.” Man Is Not Alone, 284

“The pious man knows that nothing he has has been earned; not even his perceptions, his thoughts and words, or even his life, are his deservedly. He knows that he has no claim to anything with which he is endowed…To the pious man gloom represents an overbearing and presumptuous depreciation of underlying realities. Gloom implies that man thinks he has a right to a better, more pleasing world. Gloom is a refusal, not an offer; a snub, not an appreciation; a retreat instead of a pursuit. Gloom’s roots are in pretentiousness, fastidiousness and a disregard of the good. The gloomy man, living in irritation and in a constant quarrel with his destiny, senses hostility everywhere, and seems never to be aware of the illegitimacy of his own complaints.” Man Is Not Alone, 288

The value of suffering is repentance. “While the historian explains the suffering of Israel in terms of the political geography of Palestine, which, situated astride the crossroads of three continents, was exposed to the ambitions of conquerors, the prophet speaks of a divine plan to let Israel be afflicted in order to atone, not for its own sins, but also for the sins of the heathen.” 171

“Every experience opens the door into a temple of new light, although the vestibule may be dark and dismal. The pious man accepts life’s ordeals and its need of anguish, because he recognizes these as belonging to the totality of life. Such acceptance does not mean complacency or fatalistic resignation. He is not insensitive. On the contrary he is keenly sensitive to pain and suffering, to adversity and evil in his own life and in that of others; but he has the inner strength to rise above grief, and, with his understanding of what these sorrows really are, grief seems to him a sort of arrogance. We never know the ultimate meaning of things, and so a sharp distinction between what we deem good or bad in experience in unfair. It is a greater thing to love than to grieve, and, with love’s awareness of the far-reachingness of all that affects our lives, the pious man will never overestimate the seeming weight of momentary happenings.” Man Is Not Alone, 287