I can always tell when you're reading somewhere in the house,' my mother used to say. 'There's a special silence, a reading silence. Francis Spufford More Quotes by Francis Spufford More Quotes From Francis Spufford Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be. Francis Spufford reading tree song God doesn't want your careful virtue, He wants your reckless generosity. Francis Spufford generosity virtue want You never came out the way you came in. Francis Spufford funny-inspirational inspirational funny The emotions that sustain religious belief are all, in fact, deeply ordinary and deeply recognisable to anybody who has ever made their way across the common ground of human experience as an adult. Francis Spufford adults religious ordinary If you based your knowledge of the human species exclusively on adverts, you'd think that the normal condition of humanity was to be a good-looking single person between 20 and 35, with excellent muscle-definition and/or an excellent figure, and a large disposable income. Francis Spufford income humanity thinking Belief demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending - pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture. Francis Spufford common-sense demand culture Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue. Francis Spufford fool stuff believe Taking the things people do wrong seriously is part of taking them seriously. It’s part of letting their actions have weight. It’s part of letting their actions be actions rather than just indifferent shopping choices; of letting their lives tell a life-story, with consequences, and losses, and gains, rather than just be a flurry of events. It’s part of letting them be real enough to be worth loving, rather than just attractive or glamorous or pretty or charismatic or cool. Francis Spufford shopping real loss We are supposed to be on the side of goodness in the sense that we need it, not that we are it. Francis Spufford goodness sides needs What follows is more about books than it is about me, but nonetheless it is my inward autobiography, for the words we take into ourselves help to shape us. Francis Spufford inward shapes book When I'm tired and therefore indecisive, it can take half an hour to choose the book I am going to have with me while I brush my teeth. Francis Spufford teeth tired book If your memory was OK you could descend upon on a bookshop – a big enough one so that the staff wouldn’t hassle a browser – and steal the contents of books by reading them. I drank down 1984 while loitering in the 'O' section of the giant Heffers store in Cambridge. When I was full I carried the slopping vessel of my attention carefully out of the shop. Francis Spufford reading memories book What I absolutely want is to suggest that before it's anything else, redemption is God mending the bicycle of our souls; God bringing out the puncture repair kit, re-inflating the tires, taking off the rust, making us roadworthy once more. Not so that we can take flight into ecstasy, but so that we can do the next needful mile of our lives. Francis Spufford more bicycle god want Self-awareness is not the same thing as self-approval, any more than imagination is the same thing as day-dreaming. Francis Spufford self-awareness same more imagination Despite the best efforts of apologists like William Lane Craig, the 'evidence' for Christianity's truth is, in truth, not the kind that science will or should ever admit. We believers mean something different by the word: something that puts faith permanently in the category of irreproducible results. Francis Spufford best truth faith science Christians are as subject to complacency as anybody else, and we can certainly settle into repetition and forget that something radical and extraordinary is being asked of us as well - that we hold to an extraordinary promise about how, from moment to moment, something enters the world and enters us, after which everything is different. Francis Spufford everything moment forget world I think I have made allowances for the kind of despair which would test my faith, but you cannot know in advance what disaster to those you love would be too much to bear faithfully, and like everyone's, my faith is weakly conditional in some ways. I hope, I pray not to lose it. My fingers are crossed. Also my heart. Francis Spufford hope faith heart love Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue. Yet emotions are also our indispensable tool for navigating, for feeling our way through, the much larger domain of stuff that isn't susceptible to proof or disproof, that isn't checkable against the physical universe. Francis Spufford feeling you fool universe I was never argued out of faith; it was much more passive than that - and I wasn't argued back in, either. Francis Spufford more never back faith There have been low moments before, but Christianity is an incredibly adaptable organism, using different parts of its repertoire to mutate into new ecological niches, yet preserving intact its story of grace, of love improbably triumphant. Francis Spufford new moments grace love
