These are from “The Eighth Day,” which I am still reading, and which I note here so I don’t simply forget them.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know if I agree; I do know they merit a little more thought.<\/p>\n
About John Ashley:<\/p>\n
Men [and women] of faith […] are not afraid; they are not self-regarding; they are constantly nourished by astonishment and wonder at life itself.\u00c2\u00a0 They are not interesting.\u00c2\u00a0 They lack those traits – our bosom companions – that so strongly engage our interest: aggression, the dominating will, envy, destructiveness and self-destructiveness.\u00c2\u00a0 […]\u00c2\u00a0 They have little sense of humor, which draws so heavily on a consciousness of superiority and on an aloofness from the predicaments of others.\u00c2\u00a0 In general they are inarticulate, especially in matters of faith.\u00c2\u00a0 […]\u00c2\u00a0 They are slow to give words to the object of their faith.\u00c2\u00a0 To them it is self-evident and the self-evident is not easily described.\u00c2\u00a0 But men and women without faith, they<\/em> are articulate.\u00c2\u00a0 They are constantly and loudly expatiating on it: it is ‘faith in life’, in the ‘meaning of life’, in God, in progress, in humanity – all those whipped words, those twisted signposts, that borrowed finery, all that traitor’s eloquence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I can’t entirely agree with him – after all, if all men of faith are not interesting, and John Ashley is such a man, I should not be fascinated by John Ashley’s story.<\/p>\n
A bit more on faith:<\/p>\n
There is no creation without faith and hope.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no faith and hope that does not express itself in creation.\u00c2\u00a0 These men and women work.\u00c2\u00a0 The spectacle that most discourages them is not error or ignorance or cruelty, but sloth.\u00c2\u00a0 This work that they do may often seem to be all but imperceptible.\u00c2\u00a0 That is characteristic of activity that never for a moment envisages an audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
John Ashley speaking to his horse:<\/p>\n
“Evangeline, I’m a family man.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s all.\u00c2\u00a0 I have no talents.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not even an engineer [which he was by profession].\u00c2\u00a0 All I have to show, living and dying, is that I’m a family man.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Well, that’s enough for now.\u00c2\u00a0 The quotes are on pages 98-100 and 106-107 in the UK Penguin paperback dated 1969, at the outset of chapter 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
These are from “The Eighth Day,” which I am still reading, and which I note here so I don’t simply forget them.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know if I agree; I do know they merit a little more thought. About John Ashley: Men [and women] of faith […] are not afraid; they are not self-regarding; they are constantly nourished by astonishment and wonder at life itself.\u00c2\u00a0 They are not interesting.\u00c2\u00a0 They lack those traits – our bosom companions – that so strongly engage our interest: aggression, the dominating will, envy, destructiveness and self-destructiveness.\u00c2\u00a0 […]\u00c2\u00a0 They have little sense of humor, which draws so heavily on a consciousness of superiority and on an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}