“God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his—if, indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.”
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We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an on-line journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful.We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism.
We have a great appreciation for the thought of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Irving Babbitt and Christopher Dawson, among other imaginative conservatives. However, some of us look at the state of Western culture and the American Republic and see a huge dark cloud which seems ready to unleash a storm that may well wash away what we most treasure of our inherited ways. Others focus on the silver lining which may be found in the next generation of traditional conservatives who have been inspired by Dr. Kirk and his like. We hope that The Imaginative Conservative answers T.S. Eliot’s call to “redeem the time, redeem the dream.”
Winston: That was the quote that changed my life when I stumbled across it right out of college after having failed in the very first job I'd ever had. I found it in the vestibule of Blessed Sacrament Church in Seattle long before I was Catholic and I had no idea who Newman was. I couldn't even remember the name but I remembered the quote for 8 years until I was finally able to track it down.
The next line is the one that really hit me. "Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away." Which is why I end every Called & Gifted with that quote and that assurance that in Christ we can never be thrown away. Knowing as I do, that there are many listening who are wrestling with that very issue. As Newman was when he wrote it.
This elevating passage was on the prayer card handed out at Dr. Russell Kirk's funeral Mass in Grand Rapids, 1994.