"Most people spend nearly all their energy trying not to change. This is what the philosopher William James meant when he wrote the mind’s main function was to be a fortress for protecting your ego from reality. When the mind has to accommodate a new fact, James argued, it doesn’t settle on the change to its model of reality that is most likely to reflect reality. It protects the fortress, calculating the smallest possible modification to its bulwarks that can account for the new fact." - Glenn Kelman http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/sf/page/30480

"We realize more clearly than formerly that the world lies under the wrath and grace of God. We read in Jeremiah 45, 'Thus says the Lord: Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up....And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not; for behold, I am bringing evil upon all flesh...but I will give your life as a prize of war in all places to which you may go.' If we can save our souls unscathed out of the wreckage of our material possessions, let us be satisfied with that. If the Creator destroys the Divine handiwork, what right have we to lament the destruction of ours? It will be the task of our generation, not to 'seek great things,' but to save and preserve our souls out of the chaos, and to realize that it is the only thing we can carry as a 'prize' from the burning building."  Bonhoeffer - Letters and Papers from Prison 157-158