Quote of the Day

Religion . . . is not aimed at toughening the will to use it against oneself in the daily grim battle of life. That makes religion a negative force, a suppressant to every human impulse, a marching order for those who think believing demands they forsake all that is human and leaves little room for the spontaneous possibilities of love and forgiveness. The latter go together all the time in anybody who lives, as St. John expresses it, "life to the full."

The object of religion is the imagination, that deep and inexhaustible font of our understanding and symbolizing our deepest possibilities. St. Pope John XXIII called for the Second Vatican Council because he understood, as no Holy Father had in a long time, religion spoke to and found its language and symbols – its entire sense of the sacramental nature of existence – in the imagination that reveals not just the penalties of living, but the wonder and awe of our existence.

– Eugene Cullen Kennedy
Excerpted from "Religion Speaks Not to the Will, But to the Imagination"
National Catholic Reporter
November 26, 2014

For more of Eugene Kennedy at The Wild Reed, see:
• Eugene Kennedy on Roman Catholicism's "Post-Hierarchical Blues"
• Quote of the Day – July 24, 2010
• Celebrating the Dormition of Mary
• What Is It That Ails You?

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• A Return to the Spirit
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Joan Timmerman
• In the Footsteps of Spring

Image: Kristen Solberg.