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" Nobody really wants to live forever, but nobody wants to die either. Nobody wants to watch people dying, so we have created entire industries to sequester them or rid ourselves of them, or we cleverly convince them to excuse themselves from our attention by exercising their autonomy. Perhaps even more pointedly, we don’t want to be seen dying, so the padded and privileged expend their energy and reserves on the creeping harbinger of death we call “aging.” Thus emerges another market, the wellness industrial complex, which at once capitalizes on our fear of dying and leverages what physician Raymond Barfield calls our “desire to be desirable.” “The fear of death, with no grasp of what makes a life truly good, is the stupendously irrational desire for mere duration. "
― James K.A. Smith , On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
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" What if we leaned on the rock instead of the sand? What if there was someone who gathered up all that is lost? What if there was a beloved who could never die, who loved you first, whose love called everything into existence and is therefore stronger than death? ... "Happy is the person who loves you," Augustine says, "and his friend in you, and his enemy because of you." Happiness is loving everyone and everything in God, the immortal one who holds all mortal creatures in his hand. When one loves in this way - in this "order," so to speak - then, "though left alone, he loses none dear to him; for all are dear in the one who cannot be lost. "
― James K.A. Smith , On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
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" They broke up into pairs, and the other two wandered afield and came across a small, humble house that was home to some monks. Welcomed inside, one of Ponticianus’s friends, scanning the shelves, picked up The Life of Antony, a biography of the Egyptian monk by Athanasius. He was immediately pulled in by the book and “set on fire.” Suddenly he was filled with holy love and sobering shame. Angry with himself, he turned his eyes on his friend and said to him: “Tell me, I beg of you, what do we hope to achieve with all our labours? What is our aim in life? What is the motive of our service to the state? Can we hope for any higher office in the palace than to be Friends of the Emperor? And in that position what is not fragile and full of dangers? How many hazards must one risk to attain a position of even greater danger? And when will we arrive there? Whereas, if I wish to become God’s friend, in an instant I may become that now.”19 What is our aim in life? What are we aiming for when we aim our lives at some aspiration? The question isn’t whether we aim our lives. Our existence is like an arrow on a taut string: it will be sent somewhere. It’s not a matter of quelling ambition, of “settling,” as if that were somehow more virtuous (or even possible). The alternative to disordered ambition that ultimately disappoints is not some holy lethargy or pious passivity. It’s recalibrated ambition that aspires for a different end and does so for different reasons. What "
― James K.A. Smith , On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
