And the moral of the story is

Finished reading His Dark Materials. It's moving in a kind quiet way. It celebrates the everyday goodness of living a humble but engaged life. Its final emphasis is on building the Republic of Heaven in the here and now:

But then we wouldn't have been able to build it. No one could if they put themselves first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we'll build ... [ellipsis in the original]

And so for day 384
01.01.2008