We Are As Great As

A Real Writer Learns From Earlier Writers The Way A Boy Learns From An Apple Orchard -- By Stealing What He Has A Taste For, And Can Carry Off

Journalism Wishes To Tell What It Is That Has Happened Everywhere As Though The Same Things Had Happened For Every Man. Poetry Wishes To Say What It Is Like For Any Man To Be Himself In The Presence Of A Particular Occurrence As Though Only He Were Alone There.

The Map Of America Is A Map Of Endlessness, Of Opening Out, Of Forever And Ever. No Man's Face Would Make You Think Of It But His Hope Might, His Courage Might.

To See The Earth As We Now See It, Small And Beautiful In That Eternal Silence Where It Floats, Is To See Ourselves As Riders On The Earth Together, Brothers On That Bright Loveliness In The Unending Night ~ Brothers Who See Now They Are Truly Brothers.

Man Depends On God For All Things: God Depends On Man For One. Without Man's Love God Does Not Exist As God, Only As Creator, And Love Is The One Thing No One, Not Even God Himself, Can Command. It Is A Free Gift Or It Is Nothing. And It Is Most Itself, Most Free, When It Is Offered In Spite Of Suffering, Of Injustice, And Of Death . . . The Justification Of The Injustice Of The Universe Is Not Our Blind Acceptance Of God's Inexplicable Will, Nor Our Trust In God's Love, His Dark And Incomprehensible Love, For Us, But Our Human Love, Notwithstanding Anything, For Him.