Today there are once more saints and villains. Instead of the uniform grayness of the rainy day, we have the black storm cloud and the brilliant lightning flash. Outlines stand out with exaggerated sharpness. Shakespeare’s characters walk among us. The villain and the saint emerge from primeval depths and by their appearannce they tear open the infernal or the divine abyss from which they come and enable us to see for a moment into mysteries of which we had never dreamed.
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(For those who are not familiar with Bonhoeffer–he was an important leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany. He was executed in 1945.)
I was reminded of the above passage by something Cara Ellison wrote a couple of days ago in discussing the 9/11 anniversary:
I guess I thought they were all gone, those types of monsters, stranded on reels of black and white film.
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