Bloody Sunday

I had a very moral view when I was younger.
I thought everybody cared.
I think it’s part of a Catholic upbringing,
that idea of universal solidarity.
That was a journey for me . . .
I didn’t think the government was bad.
I genuinely thought they just didn’t know
and if I just went to London to tell them, people would say,
‘Do you hear that young woman there? We need to do something about that.’
But then I realised: the bastards, they do know and not only do they know,
they don’t see anything wrong with it.

I care passionately about justice, about ideas, about principles.
I love this work I do now, working with people on the margins.
Living on the margins is where I get least bored.
My only interest in rules is to see how far they can be pushed.
I am always interested in the boundary beyond which we’re told things won’t work,
in where the tension is that requires change, to make those things work out there.

                Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Irish civil rights leader
                Excerpted from The Irish Times, September 2016

 

 

 

 

 

                    

The Mission of Non-violence

This is no appeal made by a man
who does not know his business.
I have been practising with scientific precision
non-violence and its possibilities
for an unbroken period of over fifty years.
I have applied it in every walk of life,
domestic, institutional, economic and political.
I know of no single case in which it has failed.
Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed,
I have ascribed it to my imperfections.
I claim no perfection for my self.
But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth,
which is but another name for God.
In the course of the search
the discovery of non-violence came to me.
Its spread is my life-mission.
I have no interest in living
except for the prosecution of that mission.

           Mahatma Gandhi, open letter "To Every Briton" 1940

 

 

 

 

 

Differences

Everyone has the same God;
only people differ.

             Anton Chekhov, The Duel

 

 

 

 

 

Why or what for

We're all alive, but we don't know why or what for;
we're all searching for happiness;
we're all leading lives that are different and yet the same.

             Anne Frank, diary entry 6 July 1944

 

 

 

 

 

Happily Ever After?

Did they live happily ever after?
They did not.
No one ever does, in spite of what the stories may say.
They had their good days, as you do,
and they had their bad days, and you know about those.
They had their victories, as you do,
and they had their defeats, and you know about those, too.
There were times when they felt ashamed of themselves,
knowing they had not done their best,
and there were times when they knew they had stood
where their God had meant them to stand.
All I’m trying to say is that they lived as well as they could.

                       Stephen King, The Eyes of the Dragon

 

 

 

 

 

Play

Psychiatrist Stuart Brown has proposed this simple definition:
"Play is spontaneous behavior that has no clear-cut goal
and does not conform to a stereotypical pattern.
The purpose of play is simply play itself;
it appears to be pleasurable."

In a study of 26 convicted murderers,
Brown discovered that as children, most of them had suffered
either "from the absence of play or abnormal play like bullying,
sadism, extreme teasing, or cruelty to animals."

Brown's work led him to explore the biological roots of play.
"New and exciting studies of the brain,
evolution, and animal behavior," he wrote,
"suggest that play may be as important to life --
for us and other animals -- as sleeping and dreaming."

                          Animals at Play, National Geographic

 

 

 

 

Poem: To the Not Impossible Him

How shall I know, unless I go

To Cairo and Cathay,

Whether or not this blessèd spot

Is blest in every way?

 

Now it may be, the flower for me

Is this beneath my nose;

How shall I tell, unless I smell

The Carthaginian rose?

 

The fabric of my faithful love

No power shall dim or ravel

Whilst I stay here,—but oh, my dear,

If I should ever travel!

 

                      Edna St. Vincent Millay

                      First Scheduled Transcontinental Flight
                      January 25, 1959

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beautiful

You're beautiful.
Yes you are,
you're very very beautiful.
Extremely beautiful.

          Orson Welles
          January 24, National Compliment Day 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Animating confidence

I have the most animating confidence
that the present noble struggle for liberty
will terminate gloriously for America.

                John Hancock, 1774 speech 

 

 

 

 

 

Moderation

An attitude of moderation
is apt to be misunderstood
when passions are greatly excited
and when victory is apt to rest
with the extremists on one side or the other;
yet I think it is in the long run
the only wise attitude.

     Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography

 

 

 

 

 

Go forward and give us victories

Beware of rashness,
but with energy, and sleepless vigilance,
go forward and give us victories.

         Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to General Joseph Hooker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summoned

Now the trumpet summons us again—
not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need—
not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—
but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle,
year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"—
a struggle against the common enemies of man:
tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself. 

            John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961

Hope over fear

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real.
They are serious and they are many.
They will not be met easily or in a short span of time.
But know this, America — they will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear,
unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim
an end to the petty grievances and false promises,
the recriminations and worn out dogmas,
that for far too long have strangled our politics.

            Barack Obama, Inaugural address 2009 

What is it America has failed to hear?

I feel that we must always work
with an effective, powerful weapon and method
that brings about tangible results.
But it is not enough for me
to stand before you tonight and condemn riots.
It would be morally irresponsible for me to do
that without, at the same time,
condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions
that exist in our society.
These conditions are the things that cause individuals
to feel that they have no other alternative
than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention.
And I must say tonight that
a riot is the language of the unheard.
And what is it America has failed to hear?
It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor
has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years.
It has failed to hear that the promises
of freedom and justice have not been met.
And it has failed to hear that large segments
of white society are more concerned about
tranquility and the status quo
than about justice and humanity.

        The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., The Other America
        Speech at Grosse Pointe High School, March 14, 1968

 

 

 

 

 

Racing to make our world better

Once we realize we are all members of humanity,
we will want to compete in the spirit of love.
In a competition of love
we would not be running against one another,
but with one another.
We would be trying to gain victory for all humanity.
If I am a faster runner than you,
you may feel bad seeing me pass you in the race,
but if you know that we are both racing to make our world better,
you will feel good knowing that we are racing
toward a common goal, a mutual reward.
In a competition of love we'll all share in the victory,
no matter who comes first.

            Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly

 

 

 

 

 

Depressed? Low self-esteem?

Before you diagnose yourself
with depression or low self-esteem,
first make sure that you are not, in fact,
just surrounded by assholes.

             Notorious d.e.b. (@debihope) on Twitter 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hanlon's Razor

Almost all conspiracy theories can be dispelled
by applying the principle known as Hanlon's Razor:
            "Do not attribute to malice
              that which is more easily explained by stupidity."

                                          Fred LaMotte

The vital question

Just to be is a blessing.
Just to live is holy.
And yet being alive
is no answer to the problems of living.
To be or not to be is not the question.
The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?

The tendency to forget this vital question
is the tragic disease of contemporary man,
a disease that may prove fatal,
that may end in disaster.
To pray is to recollect passionately
the perpetual urgency of this vital question.

         Abraham Joshua Heschel, No Religion is an Island

 

 

 

 

 

Robots

Why is it so hard to keep the mind concentrated,
and to live up to our good resolutions?
The problem is the basically mechanical nature
of our left-brain consciousness.
We have a kind of robot servant who does things for us:
we learn to type or drive a car, painfully and consciously,
then our robot takes over,
and does it far more quickly and efficiently.
Because man is the most complex creature on Earth,
he is forced to rely on his robot far more than other animals.
The result is that, whenever he gets tired, the robot takes over.
For the modern city dweller,
most of his everyday living is done by the robot.
This is why it takes an emergency
to concentrate the mind 'wonderfully',
and why we forget so quickly.

                            Colin Wilson, Alien Dawn

 

 

 

 

 

If I had a hammer. . .

I suppose it is tempting,
if the only tool you have is a hammer,
to treat everything as if it were a nail. 

         Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance

Keep your head

As someone pointed out recently,
if you can keep your head when
all about you are losing theirs,
it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation.

              Jean Kerr, Please Don't Eat the Daisies

 

 

 

 

 

The future

The future is not a result of choices
among alternative paths offered by the present,
but a place that is created –
created first in the mind and will,
created next in activity.

The future is not some place we are going to,
but one we are creating.
The paths are not to be found, but made,
and the activity of making them,
changes both the maker and the destination.

                          John Scharr 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do not disturb

Never let the future disturb you.
You will meet it, if you have to,
with the same weapons of reason
which today arm you against the present.

           Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The secret of transformation

The present moment
contains past and future.
The secret of transformation,
is in the way we handle this very moment. 

         Thich Nhat Hanh, Understanding Our Mind

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps

The future is called "perhaps,"
which is the only possible thing to call the future.
And the important thing
is not to allow that to scare you. 

             Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending

 

 

 

 

 

Start writing

The past is written,
but the future is left for us to write,
and we have powerful tools, Rios:
openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity.
All they have is secrecy, and fear,
and fear is the great destroyer, Rios.

       Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek episode written by Michael Chabon

 

 

 

 

Better

People ask me to predict the future,
when all I want to do is prevent it.
Better yet, build it.
Predicting the future
is much too easy, anyway.
You look at the people around you,
the street you stand on,
the visible air you breathe,
and predict more of the same.
To hell with more. I want better.

            Ray Bradbury, Beyond 1984

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fare forward

Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you.

                       T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving On - Fare Well

This is not our first time
to try to move on into the future.
It just keeps becoming the present.

             Sister Margaret Rose, Drumalis, Northern Ireland 

A link to the Scottish celebration of the end of one year and the beginning of the next.
The largest swarm drone show ever seen in the UK.
150 drones create iconic images and words in the Scottish sky set to original words and music.
Edinburgh's Hogmanay 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx3Zmkgt2no 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It Depends on Us...

Another year lies before us
like an unwritten page,
an unspent coin,
an unwalked road.
How the pages will read,
what treasures will be gained
in exchange for time,
or what we find along the way,
will largely depend on us.

           Esther Baldwin York

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: New Year's Resolution

Well, I did it again, bringing in
that infant Purity across the land,
welcoming Innocence with gin
in New York, waiting up
to help Chicago,
Denver, L.A., Fairbanks, Hon-
olulu—and now
the high school bands are alienating Dallas,
and girls in gold and tangerine
have lost all touch with Pasadena,
and young men with muscles and missing teeth
are dreaming of personal fouls,
and it’s all beginning again, just like
those other Januaries in
instant replay.

But I’ve had enough
of turning to look back, the old
post-morteming of defeat:
people I loved but didn’t touch,
friends I haven’t seen for years,
strangers who smiled but didn’t speak—failures,
failures. No,
I refuse to leave it at that, because
somewhere, off camera,
January is coming like Venus
up from the murk of December, re-
virginized, as innocent
of loss as any dawn. Resolved: this year
I’m going to break my losing streak,
I’m going to stay alert, reach out,
speak when not spoken to,
read the minds of people in the streets.
I’m going to practice every day,
stay in training, and be moderate
in all things.
All things but love.

                          Philip Appleman