Poem: Year's End

Neither the symbolic detail
of a three instead of a two,
nor that rough metaphor
that hails one term dying and another emerging,
nor the fulfillment of an astronomical process
muddle and undermine
the high plateau of this night
making us wait
for the twelve irreparable strokes of the bell.
The real cause
is our murky pervasive suspicion
of the enigma of Time,
it is our awe at the miracle
that, though the chances are infinite
and through we are
drops in Heraclitus’ river,
allows something in us to endure,
never moving.

        Jorge Luis Borge, translated from the Spanish by W. S. Merwin

 

 

 

 

 

Next!

 Producer Matthew Weiner asked legendary TV producer Norman Lear to tell him the greatest lesson he ever learned. “Lear said, ‘The two words that came way too late in my life were ‘Over. Next,’ as in, ‘That’s over … Next!’ And then he said, ‘Don’t wait till you’re my age to learn that.’ ”   

New York Magazine 9/27/21 

 

 

 

 

Bits of light

You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything... and know that we don't, that's the important part.

                Noam Chomsky, 2011 interview

 

 

 

 

 

Practice makes perfect

This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day,
        we have failed to practise ourselves
                the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

                                C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Back to business

Christmas is over and Business is Business 

            Franklin Pierce Adams, For the Other 365 Days

 

 

 

 

 

Litany: The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.

                    Howard Thurman

 

 

 

 

 

Nativity

Our Druidic ancestors welcomed every child with the words:

                    Here comes God again.
 

                                  Fr. John Cullen, letter July 14, 2016

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Holidays

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;—
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;—a fairy tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

                    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Theft

It came without ribbons.
It came without tags.
It came without packages, boxes, or bags.
Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.
Maybe Christmas means a little bit more.

            Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

Recognition as the beginning of everything

No magic can change something into something that it is not;
the imaginative transformation at the heart of magic is recognition, not creation.

                Susan Palwick, The Last Unicorn: Magic as Metaphor 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter solstice

Let's go and get drunk on light again –                                 

        it has the power to console.

                                Georges Seurat 

Drifting

When I was in my teens, I invented a term to describe them. I call it 'holiday consciousness' . . . because I often experienced this sense of optimism and wide-awakeness when setting out on a journey or a holiday. It was always the feeling that the world is self-evidently complex and beautiful, and that life is so obviously good that man's boredom and defeat is an absurdity . . . And then I used to ask: Why do men forget this so easily? And the answer seemed obvious: because the human will is so flabby and weak. Instead of being self-controlled, self-driven creatures, most men are little more than leaves on a stream, they drift along hoping for the best. I once wrote that men are like grandfather clocks driven by watchsprings.

         Colin Wilson,  The Black Room

Cold comfort

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense
        rests on a secure foundation:
                our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

                        Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Light the Festive Candles

Light the first of eight tonight—
the farthest candle to the right.

Light the first and second, too,
when tomorrow's day is through.

Then light three, and then light four—
every dusk one candle more

Till all eight burn bright and high,
honoring a day gone by

When the Temple was restored,
rescued from the Syrian lord,

And an eight-day feast proclaimed—
The Festival of Lights—well named

To celebrate the joyous day
when we regained the right to pray
to our one God in our own way.

                        Alicia Lucia Fisher 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All we need is love. . .

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings
in such a way as to complete and fulfill them,
for it alone takes them and joins them
by what is deepest in themselves.
All we need is to imagine our ability to love
developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.

        Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man 

 

 

 

 

One definition

Our word "idiot" comes from the Greek name
        for the man who took no share in public matters.

                Edith Hamilton,The Greek Way to Western Civilization

 

 

 

 

Waiting

 It is said to await certainty is to await eternity.

        Jonas Salk, Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine 

 

 

 

 

 

To be a voice, to be responsible

There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.

The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

Abraham Joshua Heschel,  The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement