Christianity, he said, ‘is almost solely based on suffering’: Elie Wiesel, ‘The Art of Fiction No. 79’, Paris Review, spring 1984, no.91.
‘there must be a meaning in suffering’: Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, Pocket Books, New York, 1984, p.88.
Chapter 20: Lessons on Hope from the Hanoi Hilton
‘What is to give light must endure burning’: Anton Wildgans, Helldunkle Stunde (Helldark Hour), written in 1916, and quoted by Viktor E. Frankl in The Doctor and the Souclass="underline" From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy, Souvenir Press, 2012, where it is translated as quoted in this book. The sentence is sometimes translated as ‘What should shine, must tolerate that it burns.’ Note also that this quote is often wrongly attributed to Frankl.
By studying Stoicism, Stockdale wrote, he became ‘a man detached’: James Stockdale, ‘Courage under fire: Testing Epictetus’s doctrines in a laboratory of human behavior’, Hoover Essays, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1993, no.6, p.6; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/.
Stockdale quotes Epictetus: Ibid., p.7. Stockdale was quoting Epictetus in Enchiridion.
watched his plane land in a rice paddy and burst into flames: ‘Admiral James B. Stockdale’, Academy of Achievement website, 26 June 2019.
‘After ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement’: From Stockdale, ‘Courage under fire’, p.7.
The former category included: Ibid., p.7
an ‘object of contempt’, a criminal: Stockdale also wrote, ‘Make sure in your heart of hearts, in your inner self, that you treat your station in life with indifference, not with contempt, only with indifference.’ (Ibid., p.9.)
a ‘thundering herd of men ran towards him’: ‘Admiral James B. Stockdale’, Academy of Achievement website.
I shut down that torture system and they never wanted it brought up again’: Ibid.
‘I never lost faith in the end of the story’: Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, HarperBusiness, New York, 2001, pp.83–85.
‘And they died of a broken heart’: Ibid. (Also quoted on Collins’s website, at www.jimcollins.com/media_topics/TheStockdaleParadox.html).
‘to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality’: Ibid.
‘God talks in the trees’: Excerpt from The Sign of Jonas by Thomas Merton. Copyright © 1953 by The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani and renewed 1981 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Chapter 21: Raiding the Unspeakable
he didn’t want to be ‘preachy about it’: Joanne Kimberlin, ‘Our POWs: Locked up for 6 years, he unlocked a spirit inside’, The Virginian-Pilot, 11 November 2008.
‘The kingdom, Jesus taught . . . belongs to the poor’: Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, Thomas Nelson, Tennessee, 2018, pp.153–154.
‘The greatest attraction to investigating spirituality and religion’: Mark McCrindle, Faith and Belief in Australia: A National Study into Religion, Spirituality and Worldview Trends, 2017, McCrindle Research Pty Ltd, Sydney. The major repellent, or turn-off, for people walking into a church, was ‘hearing from public figures and celebrities who are examples of that faith’. The study was conducted after years of protracted opposition to same-sex marriage in this country, in which many churches invested heavily, and during which horrendous things were said by prominent Christian politicians and leaders about gays and lesbians. It was as though there was only one message coming from the church.
‘He didn’t patronise my people or me’: Minniecon was reluctant when McIntyre asked if he would work with the Anglican Church in Redfern decades ago, responding: ‘With the Crown as its head, the Anglican Church in Australia represented the dispossession and destruction of my people.’ But he trusted McIntyre, who ‘became our greatest advocate, supporter and also our greatest protector.’
‘The saved one was very keen to meet Tim’: Helen Garner, Everywhere I Look, Text Publishing, 2016, pp.36–37.
She was then working on her new book about sex: In Shameless (Crown Publishing, New York, 2019), she tells us to take antiquated ides about sex and ‘burn them the fuck down’. She looks at how conservative ideas about sexuality can screw with people’s brains, and suggests women send her their purity rings so she and an artist friend can melt them and make them into a sculpture of a vagina. This did not win her universal acclaim. But when she left her Denver parish after ten years to become a public theologian, her congregation gave her a stole with an image of Wonder Woman on it.
‘I’ve never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame’: Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People, Convergent, New York, 2015, used with permission.
‘Never once did Jesus scan the room for the best example of holy living’: Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint, Jericho Books, Nashville, 2013, used with permission. When the much-loved writer Rachel Held Evans died unexpectedly at the age of thirty-seven, Bolz-Weber, a close friend, gave this benediction at her funeraclass="underline"
Blessed are the agnostics.
Blessed are they who doubt.
Blessed are those who have nothing to offer.
Blessed are the preschoolers who cut in line at communion.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.
Blessed are those whom no one else notices.
The kids who sit alone at middle-school lunch tables.
The laundry guys at the hospital.
The sex workers and the night-shift street sweepers.
The closeted. The teens who have to figure out ways to hide the new cuts on their arms.
Blessed are the meek. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.
Blessed are they who have loved enough to know what loss feels like.
Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried.
Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else.
Blessed are those who ‘still aren’t over it yet’.
Blessed are those who mourn.
You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.
‘a spirit of inquiry was a threat to moral hygiene’: Tim Winton, The Boy Behind the Curtain, Penguin, 2016, © Tim Winton, reproduced with permission.
Germaine Greer dismissed the Bible as a ‘silly’ book: Quoted in Meredith Lake, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2018, p.308.
Chapter 22: Embracing Doubt
‘the doubt of the century’: Gopi Chandra Kharel, ‘The doubt of the century? “I doubt if there is God,” says Church of England Head’, International Business Times, 20 September 2014.