We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. We … Continue reading Quote for Today: Karen Armstong
myth
Beloved’s Journey, Chapter 7: In Mother’s Garden
I know this place. I sat upon that rock as a child and ruled as Fairy Empress of the Violets. Memories of hours spent in another world rush over me and I try to hold onto them, hoping to push past them into other moments, but to no avail. Everything in my mind coalesces into … Continue reading Beloved’s Journey, Chapter 7: In Mother’s Garden
Beloved’s Journey: Chapter 4, Journeys Begin
"Bloody beastly women!" Veracity falls in a heap on the sand, lifting his burned feet awkwardly into the air like some sort of unwilling yogi. A desert rodent runs pell-mell across the sand. Mid stride it begins to balloon, morphing, cartoon like, into a camel, its legs thrust out in four different directions. I stifle a … Continue reading Beloved’s Journey: Chapter 4, Journeys Begin
Quote for Today: Julian Barnes
For the point is this: not that myth refers us back to some original event which has been fancifully transcribed as it passed through collective memory; but that it refers us forward to something that will happen, that must happen. Myth will become reality, however sceptical we might be. ―Julian Barnes, A History of the … Continue reading Quote for Today: Julian Barnes
Quote for Today: C. S. Lewis
The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the … Continue reading Quote for Today: C. S. Lewis
Quote for Today: A. S. Byatt
The black thing in her brain and the dark water on the page were the same thing, a form of knowledge. This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories. The black was now in the thin … Continue reading Quote for Today: A. S. Byatt
Quote for Today: Chaim Potok
In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed … Continue reading Quote for Today: Chaim Potok
