“gifts of time, money, and sympathy”

October 23rd, 2018 | 1 min read

If you’ve never read this essay on W.H. Auden’s quiet benefience, you’re in for a real treat:

W.H. Auden had a secret life that his closest friends knew little or nothing about. Everything about it was generous and honorable. He kept it secret because he would have been ashamed to have been praised for it.

I learned about it mostly by chance, so it may have been far more extensive than I or anyone ever knew. Once at a party I met a woman who belonged to the same Episcopal church that Auden attended in the 1950s, St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery in New York. She told me that Auden heard that an old woman in the congregation was suffering night terrors, so he took a blanket and slept in the hallway outside her apartment until she felt safe again.

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Matthew Loftus

Matthew grew up in a family of 15 children and completed his medical training in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 2015, he and his family have lived in East Africa, where he currently teaches and practices Family Medicine at a mission hospital. His work has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Atlantis, and Mere Orthodoxy and his first book is forthcoming from InterVarsity Press. You can learn more about his work and writing at www.matthewandmaggie.org and preorder his forthcoming book here: https://www.ivpress.com/resisting-therapy-culture

Topics:

Culture

History

Ethics

“gifts of time, money, and sympathy”

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