Good and Evil

From Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart:

“We must not shrink from the knowledge of the evilness of evil.  Over and over we must know that the real target of evil is not destruction of the body, the reduction to rubble of cities; the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from without to within….  To drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind – this is always the ultimate answer to the great deception.”

I love this from Howard Thurman – we take on the “evilness of evil” not with our grand gestures or efforts, but by being aware of the beauty around us, by being kind, and by realizing that the spirit of God is at work in our hearts and minds.  This in turn sends me to this quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”