There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used … - Marilynne Robinson

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It's cool to have parents and family who will always tell me the truth no matter what. They'll tell me if I'm doing something stupid!

Marilynne Robinson

There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding. . . . If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.

Errors, Grace, Order, Possibility, Ready

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Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

Grace, Holy, Like, Love, Love Is, What Matters

We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.

Humanity, Literature, Pain, Passed, Think, Thinking

Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.

Beauty, Brave, Eye, Men, Theologians, Thinking

He [Christ] even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him - a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail.

Afterlife, Arrest, Ear, Jesus, Resurrection, Soldier

I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it.

Art, Believe, Genius, Good, Human