My Clippings File

Mother's habit of clipping stuff rubbed off on me early and it stuck. She clipped mostly recipes but I'm more of a generalist. I'll clip anything that grabs my fancy.

Our Past is Written Deep

We do not destroy this past of ours; it is indestructible. We carry it with us; its record is written deep in our lives. We only refuse to acknowledge it as our true past and try to make it an alien thing - something that did not happen to our real selves.... But this unremembered past endures.... Our buried past is mighty; the ghosts of our father and of the selves that we have been haunt our days and nights though we refuse to acknowledge their presence.

...

The measure of our distance from each other in our nations and groups can be taken by noting the divergence, the separateness and lack of sympathy in our social memories. Conversely the measure of our unity is the extent of our common memory.

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation, 1941 p113-114, 118-120

clipped October 7, 2006

Collection: Philosophy