Keeping Time

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.
It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being;
it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time;
it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.
Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.

        Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

 

 

 

 

 

The eloquence of silence

That silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by Cicero himself,
who says, there is not only an art, but even an eloquence in it.

        Hannah More, Essays on Various Subjects, Thoughts on Conversation

 

 

 

 

Veterans' Day

During the war, did you ever think or talk about what you were doing as something that made a difference?

Oh, we talked about it amongst us.  I think that’s the one thing that kind of hurt me. When we got home, people didn’t pay any attention.  Oh, well, you’re home, glad to see you made it, fine, goodbye, and that’s it.  I was so damn mad when my dad bought that house down there (in Elk Creek) for us.  We couldn’t get the renter out of the damn thing.  I had to threaten him to get him to move.  He didn’t give a damn about me or anything else or what I’d done.

So there wasn’t any big welcome home for the veterans?

No, hell the only welcome home you got was from your own family and friends.  Well, you gotta stop and remember how many million of us came home.

You were a local hero, you had a silver star and bronze star and purple hearts.

Hell 99% of the people didn’t even know it or could care less.

They had your picture in the window at Brandeis Department Store in Omaha.

Yeah, that was during the war when they were trying to get people to buy bonds that they were doing that.  After it was over, there was none of that.

If you look back at all the things you’ve done in your life and all the things you thought were important, is this one of the top things or the top thing?

I believe so.  Of course, now there aren’t very many of us left.  So you did a terrific thing, but as time goes on, you wonder whether it was worth the effort after Korea and Viet Nam and now Iraq.  You wonder, well did we really do what we thought we did or not?

Because at the time you thought this would be the last time anybody would have to do this?

Well, yeah, that was the thinking.  I’m sure it was the same after World War I -- you know, that was ‘the war to end all wars.’  Well, World War II came along, and that was the same thing, and look at what’s happened since.  But clear back in history you find this happens all the time.

Lawrence Chittenden, My Father's War

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be a reader

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies...
The man who never reads lives only one.

    George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing neat about it

The moment God is figured out
    with nice neat lines and definitions,
        we are no longer dealing with God.

                Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

 

 

 

 

 

Great Spirit Prayer

Oh, Great Spirit,
Whose voice I hear in the winds
and whose breath gives life to all the world.
Hear me! I need your strength and wisdom.
Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes
ever hold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made
and my ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make me wise so that I may understand
the things you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden
in every leaf and rock.

Help me remain calm and strong in the
face of all that comes towards me.
Help me find compassion without
empathy overwhelming me.
I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother,
but to fight my greatest enemy: myself.
Make me always ready to come to you
with clean hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset,
my spirit may come to you without shame.
 

        Translated by Lakota Sioux Chief Yellow Lark in 1887

Poem: The City by the Sea -- San Francisco

At the end of our streets is sunrise;
At the end of our streets are spars;
At the end of our streets is sunset;
At the end of our streets the stars.

Ever the winds of morning
Are cool from the flashing sea—
Flowing swift from our ocean,
Till the fog-dunes crumble and flee.

Slender spars in the offing,
Mast and yard in the slips—
How they tell on the azure
Of the sea-contending ships!

Homeward into the sunset
Still unwearied we go,
Till the northern hills are misty
With the amber of afterglow.

Stars that sink to our ocean,
Winds that visit our strand,
The heavens are your pathway,
Where is a gladder land!

At the end of our streets is sunrise;
At the end of our streets are spars;
At the end of our streets is sunset;
At the end of our streets the stars.

                         George Sterling