Lent

by Jo Walton

On the other hand, the worst that will happen is that you will die and go to Hell; but so many have died, and there are so many men of quality in Hell—is there any reason why you should be ashamed to join them?

“God allows us free will, and allows the demons to work in the world. We have to make an active choice to seek God and what is good, and we have to repeat that choice over and over. If the temptations weren’t actually tempting, it wouldn’t be much of a choice, would it?

As so often, Girolamo wants lines as straight and clean as a birch sapling, where human motives turn out to be as tangled as a bramble thicket.

“I think there will be something better,” Girolamo confides. “Something that poetry reminds us of, and that is why we are drawn to love it. I think loving all earthly beauty is a way to lead us to love Heavenly beauty. So there will not be sunsets or poetry, but there will be something like them but even better.”

Or have you ever known someone for a long time, and fallen into a bad pattern with them so that you’re always quarrelling? So that no matter how good your intentions are, no matter that you’ve prayed to do better, when you start to talk to them you hear everything they say as malicious, and they do the same with you, so you can’t even say good morning without them saying sarcastically that it might be good for some people?