'The largest majority is often only an organized mob whose noise can no more change the false into the true than it can change black into white or night into day. “You must not obey a majority, no matter how large, if it opposes your principles and opinions.' He said this to each new volunteer and repeated it over and over to him, until it was engraved on his mind. Both.īecause this is the simplest statement of a truth I've held dear all my life. Of all the animals on this planet, we are surely the nastiest, the most deceitful, the most murderous and vile. How I wish today's christians thought this way, and acted on the principles they claim to venerate. It was like a dream, a beautiful, soothing dream of late autumn: low, gray skies, smell of woodsmoke, fallen leaves crackling beneath my feet, and somewhere out there, in the farmsteads and plantations ahead of me, swift retribution! My friend Mark Freeburg recently picked this book up and decided to read it, so I thought I'd revisit some of my favorite moments. The time I spent reading this book, so extremely slow by my personal standards, was time well spent and deeply savored. Throughout, I was ministered to by Russell Banks. My next two months were complicated and unpleasant, involving upheavals, betrayals, endings, and beginnings that contained the seeds of their endings. A story I knew told by a storyteller I trusted.

I was on a plane two weeks later, accompanied by this book. I started planning my trip back to my hometown, calling in favors and loans and generally mobilizing my support system. On my birthday in 1999, I got a call from a childhood friend informing me that my mother had had a debilitating stroke.

Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks