Pay attention

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

        Simone Weil, Simone Weil: A Life

 

 

 

 

Good to remember

Those who are made can be unmade.

        Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

 

 

 

 

President's Day

Michael: My father's no different than any other powerful man –
any man who's responsible for other people, like a senator or a president.

Kay: You know how naïve you sound?

Michael: Why? 

Kay: Senators and presidents don't have men killed. 

Michael: Oh. Who's being naïve, Kay?  

     Dialogue from The Godfather movie, Francis Ford Coppola & Mario Puzo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hymn: God is Love

God is Love, let heaven adore him;
God is Love, let earth rejoice;
let creation sing before him
and exalt him with one voice.
God who laid the earth’s foundation,
God who spread the heaven above,
God who breathes through all creation:
God is Love, eternal Love.

God is Love; and Love enfolds us,
all the world in one embrace:
with unfailing grasp God holds us,
every child of every race.
And when human hearts are breaking
under sorrow’s iron rod,
then we find that selfsame aching
deep within the heart of God.

God is Love; and though with blindness
sin afflicts all human life,
God’s eternal loving-kindness
guides us through our earthly strife.
Sin and death and hell shall never
o’er us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
o’er the universe must reign.

        Timothy Rees

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Tree Heart/True Heart

The hearts of trees
are serially displaced
pressed annually
outward to a ring.
They aren’t really
what we mean
by hearts, they so
easily acquiesce,
willing to thin and
stretch around some
upstart green. A
real heart does not
give way to spring.
A heart is true.
I say no more springs
without you.

        Kay Ryan 

 

 

 

 

 

Anxiety and courage

Anxiety is the unwillingness to play
    even when you know the odds are for you.
Courage is the willingness to play
    even when you know the odds are against you.

        Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin 

 

 

 

 

 

The supreme test

Most people can bear adversity;
but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power.
This is the supreme test.

        Robert G. Ingersoll, speaking of Abraham Lincoln