Susan Stinson

this makes me think of a song... i can't remember who it's by now, maybe it's suzanne vega? about how the pain of the past is romantic, but the pain of the present is just painful. hindsight and all that, yes? what we know when and how... just my rambling thoughts at the moment.

thanks for sharing this review!

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One of the things I've loved about reading Jonathan Edwards and trying to enter his mind and his world is the relief that it gives from the intense ideologies of the present. I feel traces and influences of his Calvinism in me and in much of the culture I'm living in now, but knowing more about it helps me understand what that is and how it works. One of the things that draws me to his writing is that he's farther from being a romantic than the feminist thinkers (for me, maybe it was Susan Griffin in Woman and Nature) where I first found a critique of romanticism. It's like letting myself explore the pain of the past, but also its gifts and structures and the fullness of its humanity gives me more depth and more genuine choices in responding to the pain (gifts, structures, fullness) of the present. Like it creates more intellectual/emotional/moral room to move.

Edited at 2008-09-07 12:13 pm (UTC)

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In a time of Sarah Palin and Michael Moore and Joe Lieberman and internet organizing and flaming and netiquette and the U.S.'s unsustainable role in the world, we so need that extra room for compassion and creativity. I can't wait to read the new book!!!

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xoxo

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