The Real War

Capon, The Astonished Heart, p.12o:

"We are in a war between dullness and astonishment.

Not between conservative aand liberal, not between pesant and intellectual---and above all, not between believer and nonbeliever. The modern world is dying to believe. We surreptitously read the National Enquirer in the checkout line precisely because we are itching to believe even the most unvelievable stuff, if only we can convince ourselves it's astonishing....We will buy any gnostic product on the shelves of those religions of right thinking just because we find in them a promise of conquest of death which, even though it is patently false, astonishes us more than

the church's tirseome recitation of recipes for persoinal success and its dreary preoccupation with who does what to who in the bedroom."