Monday ~ February 25, 2019

When religion tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, on the face of it the command is good, but when we come to look into it we are struck with a shocking sense of irony. Because our trouble is that we do love our neighbors as ourselves - we love them in just about the same way. For all to often, we do not love ourselves, we hate ourselves. We hate, that is, our real selves... We hate our inferiorities, our instabilities, our cowardice; and we hate the fact that we are not as talented, not as beautiful, not as graceful, not as gifted as other people. We hate ourselves for not being more than we are and we transfer this hatred to the world about us... We form a fantasy, a pleasing fantasy, of what we are really like, of what we could do if only we had the chance that other people have. We tell ourselves that these other people represent an injustice done to ourselves. And we become conspirators against them. That is where the trouble begins.

( A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)