Shannon Costello

So near to the end…and yet so far, given how little time I have actually read any of this book in the past year…two years?

In any case, 2 thoughts from #19:

1)  “And yet the more friends we have, and the more widely they are scattered, the more numerous are our fears that some portion of the vast masses of the disasters of life may light upon them…For if their life has solaced us with the charms of friendship, can it be that their death should affect us with no sadness?  He who will have none of this sadness must, if possible, have no friendly intercourse.”  (684)  Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.  Love is high-risk.  It practically guarantees pain.  But it is worse to cut yourself off from people entirely.

I have been thinking that my life, particularly my spiritual life, is too concerned with self and not enough concerned with community…

2)  “He must be an uncommonly stupid, or a shamelessly contentious person, who has read through the foregoing books to this point, and can yet question whether the Romans served wicked and impure demons.”

Augustine doesn’t mince words, does he?