It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.

W. H. Auden, with an apt description of the “consuming” mind that devours cultural artifacts rather than savoring them:

When we read more books, look at more pictures, listen to more music, than we can possibly absorb the result of such gluttony is not a cultured mind but a consuming one; what it reads, looks at, listens to, is immediately forgotten, leaving no more traces behind it than yesterday’s newspaper.

A composite image from Cooper Lake State Park in Texas (photo cred: Maria Crane) showing different stages of the total solar eclipse, from a Texas Tribune article on the viewing experience around Texas.

Larry Crabb:

The passion to protect ourselves, to keep our wounds out of sight where no one can make them worse, is the strongest passion in our hearts. And it will remain so until we experience a certain kind of relationship, until we meet the crucified and resurrected Christ, and experience a person like Christ, someone broken yet beautiful. […]

It takes someone…to shatter our defenses, to expose our brokenness, and to touch our souls with love. It takes someone…to reveal Christ, to help us see the miracle of the gospel in our hearts, that beneath all the pretense and posturing, beneath the wounds of insecurity and failure, there is divine goodness.

[I]f no one is broken enough to enjoy God’s love and give it away, our communities never become spiritual. The inevitable conflict that crops up eventually in every relationship will take us in unspiritual directions, into relationships that do not require the Spirit.