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

 

Expect miracles

Hence it is not in the least superstitious, it is even a counsel of realism,
to look for the unforeseeable and unpredictable,
to be prepared for and to expect “miracles” in the political realm.
And the more heavily the scales are weighted in favor of disaster,
the more miraculous will the deed done in freedom appear.

        Hannah Arendt, What is Freedom?

 

 

 

Everybody

Everybody is special. Everybody.
Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain.
Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.

            Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

 

 

 

 

Spacious

My heart has more rooms in it than a whore house.

        Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

 

 

 

Who counts

It’s not the voting that’s democracy,

                it’s the counting.

                            Tom Stoppard, Jumpers