What we need to get through is this idea of revenge. What we need to get to is an understanding that somebody else’s pain is also justified, it just might not be the same pain. One day maybe they will even share in the pain as something in common, not something that sets them apart
Layla Moran, British-Palestinian MP, interview, The Times, 23 December
It’s just so morbid but the conversation is not “Where do we go to be safe?” It is “Where do we want to be and who do we want to be with if we die?” . . . There is no safe place in Gaza
ibid.
Churches do not only exist for those who are pious or those who know themselves to be saved. Churches exist for those who do not go to them at all, or who do not go very often. And this is what is surely so beautiful about the Midnight Mass, or the Christmas morning service in which the pews are filled by those who would not necessarily know how to define their religious position
A. N. Wilson, The Times, 23 December
Reason has its uses — it is a gift we are given, and we should wield it, like technology, as wisely as we can. But at root, humans are fundamentally spiritual animals. The future is not atheists in space. The future, like the past, will be religious
Paul Kingsnorth, UnHerd, 25 December
Religion is not, as atheists often assume and I once assumed too, a set of beliefs to be adhered to, or arguments to be made and defended. It is an experience to be immersed in. The orthopraxy reveals the orthodoxy. Fasting makes no sense until you fast. Praying is meaningless, even embarrassing, until you start to pray. . . God makes no sense until you start to talk to him. Then, strangely enough, all sorts of other things start to make sense too
ibid.
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