Addiction is not something we can simply take care of by applying the proper remedy. For it is in the very nature of addiction to feed on our attempts to master it.
Interpretation
Addiction cannot be easily conquered; it thrives on our efforts to control it.
Gerald May highlights the complexity of addiction, suggesting that it is not just a matter of finding the right solution or remedy. Instead, attempts to control addiction often exacerbate the issue, as the nature of addiction feeds on the struggle to overcome it. This insight points to the necessity of understanding addiction as a deeply ingrained challenge that may require a different approach than straightforward attempts at mastery.
In practice
During a public health seminar discussing addiction treatment strategies.
Honesty before God requires the most fundamental risk of faith we can take: the risk that God is good, that God does love us unconditionally. It is in taking this risk that we rediscover our dignity. To bring the truth of ourselves, just as we are, to God, just as God is, is the most dignified thing we can do in this life.
The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.
Solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on any human being, no matter what his crime. Hardened criminals in the men's prisons, it is said, often beg for the lash instead.
All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race - before it had learned the obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its god to be truthful and understandable in his communications.
He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric.
It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.
The American birthright belongs, potentially, to everyone. This is unprecedented. Other countries accept migrants on the basis of economic necessity or as a humanitarian gesture. Only in America is it the direct consequence of our foundational ideals.
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