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Rod Dreher QUOTES

Rod Dreher QUOTES

1 " Here's how to get started with the antipolitical politics of the Benedict Option. Secede culturally from the mainstream. Turn off the television. Put the smartphones away. Read books. Play games. Make music. Feast with your neighbors. It is not enough to avoid what is bad; you must also embrace what is good. Start a church, or a group within your church. Open a classical Christian school, or join and strengthen one that exists. Plant a garden, and participate in a local farmer's market. Teach kids how to play music, and start a band. Join the volunteer fire department. "

― Rod Dreher

2 " Sex and commerce are fine things, but man cannot live by Viagra and the Dow Jones alone. A life led collecting things and experiences in pursuit of happiness is not necessarily a bad life, but it’s not a good life either. Too often, the Democrats act like the Party of Lust, and the Republicans the Party of Greed. Both are deadly sins that eat at the soul. "

― Rod Dreher

3 " This, it occurred to me, was the deeper meaning in the mournful merriment I had been part of that day. I stood at Mam's sink before bedtime, filling an iced tea glass with water, thinking that I had underestimated this place where I was born. I knew it was a good place to be from. I had no idea how great a place it was to be. "

― Rod Dreher , The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life

4 " Be grateful for holiness when you find it among churchmen, but do not expect it. As Flannery O’Connor wrote, “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. Priests resist it as well as others. "

― Rod Dreher , How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

5 " In Chapter 77, you had people of totally different worldviews and ideas joined together,” says Patrik. “You had, for example, democratic socialists on the one side and fervent Catholics on the other side. It was totally normal for me that as a small child, I was being raised in a community of people with very different opinions. So it shattered the bubble around me.”
The lesson of valuing diversity within a broader unity of shared goals is something that Christians today need to embrace.
“When we look at what’s happening in America today, we see that you are building walls and creating gaps between people,” he says. “For us, we are always willing to speak, to talk with the other side to avoid building walls between people. You know, it is much easier to indoctrinate someone who is enclosed within a set of walls. "

― Rod Dreher , Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents

6 " Inferno was for learning about the nature of our sins. Purgatorio is for learning how to overcome our tendencies to fall victim to them. Understanding our dilemma is important, but it's not enough. What we do with that understanding makes the difference between life and death. Humility is the foundation of all spiritual progress. Humility builds resilience. Stop thinking of yourself as the center of your world you will find it becomes easier to endure life's setbacks. Plus, you will in time become more grateful, more merciful, and more loving. "

― Rod Dreher , How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

7 " perhaps the greatest poem ever written "

― Rod Dreher

8 " To rediscover Christian asceticism is urgent for believers who want to train their hearts, and the hearts of their children, to resist the hedonism and consumerism at the core of contemporary culture. And it is necessary to teach us in our bones how God uses suffering to purify us for His purposes. "

― Rod Dreher , The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

9 " I am responsible for myself. Every time I do the things I shouldn't do or fail to do the things I should do, I sin. The weight of our sins can seem overwhelming, so much so that we feel trapped by them in a dark wood of our own making. What makes it worse is the sense in contemporary culture that sin is either not real or no big deal. "

― Rod Dreher , How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

10 " Once, during my Catholic days, I was complaining with a Catholic friend about how terrible the teaching was in parish life. A priest listening to us said that everything we griped about was true, but we didn't have to resign ourselves and our children to this fate.
'You could go online to Amazon.com tonight and have sent to you within a week a theological library that Aquinas would have envied,' he said. 'My parents raised me in the seventies, which was the beginning of the catechesis nightmare. They knew that if they were going to raise Catholic kids, they would have to do a lot of it themselves, and they did. So do you. "

― Rod Dreher , The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

11 " A church that looks and talks and sounds just like the world has no reason to exist. "

― Rod Dreher , The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

12 " I am a college-educated American. In all my years of formal schooling, I never read Plato or Aristotle, Homer or Virgil. I knew nothing of Greek and Roman history and barely grasped the meaning of the Middle Ages. Dante was a stranger to me, and so was Shakespeare. The fifteen hundred years of Christianity from the end of the New Testament to the Reformation were a blank page, and I knew only the barest facts about Luther's revolution. I was ignorant of Descartes and Newton. My understanding of Western history began with the Enlightenment. Everything that came before it was lost behind a misty curtain of forgetting. Nobody did this on purpose. Nobody tried to deprive me of my civilizational patrimony. But nobody felt any obligation to present it to me and my generation in an orderly, coherent fashion. Ideas have consequences - and so does their lack. "

― Rod Dreher , The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

13 " Accept the limitations of a place, in humility, and the joys that can also be found there may open themselves. "

― Rod Dreher , The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life

14 " And this is the thing about soft totalitarianism: It seduces those – even Christians – who have lost the capacity to love enduringly, for better or for worse. They think love, but they merely desire. They think they follow Jesus, but in fact, they merely admire him. Each of us thinks we wouldn’t be like that. But if we have accepted the lie of our therapeutic culture, which tells us that personal happiness is the greatest good of all, then we will surrender at the first sign of trouble. "

― Rod Dreher , Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents

15 " Christians often talk about “reaching the culture” without realizing that, having no distinct Christian culture of their own, they have been co-opted by the secular culture they wish to evangelize. "

― Rod Dreher , The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

16 " To live is to suffer. To become fully human is to overcome suffering by allowing it to give us wings. Stop thinking about how your struggles are weighing you down, and start thinking, with humility, about how they can lift you up, and make you more compassionate and merciful. Changing your attitude can turn a burden into a blessing. "

― Rod Dreher , How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

17 " They stood up for truth and justice not out of an expectation of achievable victory in their lifetimes, but because it was the right thing to do. "

― Rod Dreher , Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents

18 " HOW TO REFUSE DEFEAT Life is fragile and uncertain. Sooner or later, you will experience a great loss in life, when suffering reveals that the world is not the place you think it is, and that your dreams will not come true after all. What then? Don’t blame others for what happened to you, even if it might well be their fault. This is a dead end. And don’t settle for stoic acceptance of your fate. Merely bearing up under strain is noble, but it’s wasting an opportunity for transformation. You have the power to turn your burden into a blessing. What if this pain, this heartbreak, this failure, was given to you to help you find your true self? Make adversity work for you by launching a quest inside your own heart. Find the dragons hiding there, slay them, and bring back the treasure that will help you live well. "

― Rod Dreher , How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

19 " It masks its hatred of dissenters from its utopian ideology in the guise of helping and healing. "

― Rod Dreher , Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents

20 " It is better to choose to know the painful truth rather than settle on a comforting lie. Resolve to look for and to accept the truth, no matter how much it hurts. Nothing built on lies lasts. "

― Rod Dreher , How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem