The first sip of coffee, like a knife-cut of astringence, faintly sweet and bitter to the tongue: a metaphor for life. With practice some develop a taste for it,…. for life that is.
I am a Christian monk and priest, and I am, therefore, accountable before God for the actions and deeds of every monk and priest who breathed and walked the earth since Christ, as well as for the acts of my own.
He shuddered, and began shaking his head.
No, no. It crushed his spine, this burden. It was too much for any man to bear, save Christ alone. To be cursed for a faith was burden enough. To bear the curses was possible, but then—to accept the illogic behind the curses, the illogic which called one to task not only for himself but also for every member of his race or faith, for their actions as well as one’s own? To accept that too?
Until the lion is hungry………
And yet, Dom Paulo’s own Faith told him that the burden was there, had been there since Adam’s time—and the burden imposed by a fiend crying in mockery, “Man” at man, “Man“–calling each to account for the deeds of all since the beginning; a burden impressed upon every generation before the opening of the womb, the burden of the guilt of original sin. p 158
………….How neighborly for the lion to lie down with the lamb! p 168
excerpts, A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
