Do something

I'd rather be in trouble for having done something
            than for not having done anything.

                        C. S. Forester, Lieutenant Hornblower

 

 

 

 

 

Leaping upwards

This is the predicament of man.
All souls descend a ladder from heaven to the world.
Then the ladders are taken away.
Once they are in this world, they are called upon from heaven to rise, to come back.
It is a call that goes out again and again.
Each soul seeks the ladder in order to ascend above; but the ladder cannot be found.
Most people make no effort to ascend, claiming, how can one rise to heaven without a ladder?
However, there are souls which resolve to leap upwards without a ladder.
So they jump and fall down. They jump and fall down, until they stop.
Wise people think that since no ladder exists, there must be another way.
We must face the challenge and act.
Be what it may, one must leap until God, in His mercy, makes exultation come about.

        Abraham Joshua Heschel, No Religion is an Island

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: New Every Morning

Every morn is the world made new.
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
Here is a beautiful hope for you,—
A hope for me and a hope for you.

All the past things are past and over;
The tasks are done and the tears are shed.
Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover;
Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled,
Are healed with the healing which night has shed.

Yesterday now is a part of forever,
Bound up in a sheaf, which God holds tight,
With glad days, and sad days, and bad days, which never
Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight,
Their fulness of sunshine or sorrowful night.

Let them go, since we cannot re-live them,
Cannot undo and cannot atone;
God in his mercy receive, forgive them!
Only the new days are our own;
To-day is ours, and to-day alone.

Here are the skies all burnished brightly,
Here is the spent earth all re-born,
Here are the tired limbs springing lightly
To face the sun and to share with the morn
In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.

Every day is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,
And puzzles forecasted and possible pain,
Take heart with the day, and begin again.

        Susan Coolidge 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bring your own

When I played Little League baseball for a few disastrous years, my least favorite part was going up to bat, because you had to wear one of these ratty old batting helmets supplied by the local rec department. None of them fit right, and they all smelled like a hundred sweaty 10-year-olds had worn them before you, because a hundred sweaty 10-year-olds had worn them before you. And so every at-bat carried not only the risk of striking out, but also the risk of contracting head lice.

A few kids, the serious ones, brought their own helmets—custom fitted, tastefully decorated with decals, and presumably containing zero lice. These kids ran the bases like little princes. Any errant pitches bounced harmlessly off their heads, leaving their perfect skulls un-dented. The outfielders would perk up whenever a kid with a bespoke helmet stepped up to the plate, all of them thinking to themselves, this kid might actually hit the ball.

I say all this because incentives are like batting helmets: if you don’t bring your own, you’ll have to use the crappy ones that are provided for you.

            Adam Mastroianni, experimentalhistory@substack.com 

One or the other

If you can’t manage courtesy, try silence.

             Jim Butcher, White Night

 

 

 

 

 

 

The changing but unchangeable sky

I can truthfully say that nothing during my life
has impressed me so much as the sky.
It is my religion and my philosophy.
It is my cathedral,
and I believe it to be a source of inspiration
to anyone who wants to look upward.
It is the only part of this world
that Man will not change, because he cannot.

        Eric Sloane, Eric Sloane’s Weather Book

 

 

 

 

 

Do unto others

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Toni Morrison, Barnard College commencement address 1979