J.R.R. Tolkien:¹

Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.

Some time ago I snagged this quote from the blog of professor Richard Beck. Today, after learning the name Paul Farmer thru news of his death, the phrase "long defeat" resurfaced. The medical anthropologist was known for using it to describe the work he did with the poorest of the poor. Here he is in his own words:

I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory. . . . You know, people from our background — like you, like most PIH-ers, like me — we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to do in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.²

I love reading about the lives of the Inklings—the 20th century group of Oxford eccentrics. Some time ago I came across this website of quotes culled from two seprate devotional books collected by Charles WIlliams. Since I added the feed to my RSS Reeder, the snippets act like the best kind of desk calendar full of dank quotes each new day. Here’s two Pentacost Sunday gems:

A gift is properly an unreturnable giving … hence it is manifest that love has the nature of a first gift, through which all free gifts are given. So since the Holy Ghost proceeds as Love, He proceeds as the first gift. Gift … is the proper name of the Holy Ghost.

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica.

The Holy Ghost is He whereby the Begotten is loved by the One begetting and love His Begetter.

St. Augustine: On the Trinity.