Consumed by Either Fire or Fire:Journeying with T. S. Eliot

For too long, I have lived in the world wanting to change it. This has been an impossible stance. It takes normal desires to contribute something to the human condition and intensifies them into crusades that are doomed to disappoint. I have gradually weaned myself from this posture, I think, because it is just too exhausting and unsatisfying.

As I’ve traveled this road that I made hard, I’ve had many essential friends. Including T. S. Eliot. I cannot avoid him. Time and again I get absorbed in the relentless weaving of paradox and imagery in Four Quartets. Many times I have used Eliot to provoke my own experience—to understand what I’ve learned about this work of wanting the world to ...

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