Who counts

It’s not the voting that’s democracy,

                it’s the counting.

                            Tom Stoppard, Jumpers

 

 

 

 

 

Vote!

I have spoken of votes.
Living in a community where political power is lodged with the people,
and each citizen is an elector, the vote is an important expression of opinion.
The vote is the cutting edge.
It is well to have correct opinions, but the vote must follow.
The vote is the seed planted; without it there can be no sure fruit.
The winds of heaven, in their beneficence, may scatter the seed in the furrow;
but it is not from such accidents that our fields wave with the golden harvest.
He is a foolish husbandman who neglects to sow his seed;
and he is an unwise citizen, who, desiring the spread of good principles,
neglects to deposit his vote for the candidate who is the representative of those principles.

        Charles Sumner, Charles Sumner; His Complete Works, Volume III 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All Saints' Day

In his holy flirtation with the world,
    God occasionally drops a handkerchief.
        These handkerchiefs are called saints.

                    Frederick Buechner, Wishful thinking: a theological ABC

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Halloween

The butcher knife goes in, first, at the top
And carves out the round stemmed lid,
The hole of which allows the hand to go
In to pull the gooey mess inside, out—
The walls scooped clean with a spoon.
A grim design decided on, that afternoon,
The eyes are the first to go,
Isosceles or trapezoid, the square nose,
The down-turned mouth with three
Hideous teeth and, sometimes,
Round ears. At dusk it's
Lighted, the room behind it dark.
Outside, looking in, it looks like a
Pumpkin, it looks like ripeness
Is all. Kids come, beckoned by
Fingers of shadows on leaf-strewn lawns
To trick or treat. Standing at the open
Door, the sculptor, a warlock, drops
Penny candies into their bags, knowing
The message of winter: only the children,
Pretending to be ghosts, are real.

                Mac Hammond 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucky

Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small
that you would think the mere fact of existence
would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.
We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics,
infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

        Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell

 

 

 

 

 

Telling

The truth is always something that is told,
not something that is known.
If there were no speaking or writing,
there would be no truth about anything.
There would only be what is.

        Susan Sontag, The Benefactor

 

 

 

 

Wisdom

Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.

        Andre Gide, Fruits of the Earth