Living

Some people live more in 20 years than others do in 80. 

It’s not the time that matters, it’s the person.

                        Doctor Who, Season 3, Episode 6

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: A Word to Husbands

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

                    Ogden Nash

 

 

 

 

Good news?

If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, 

        then it isn't good news for anybody.

                    Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

            Robert Frost 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bewilderment

Life is easy to chronicle, 

        but bewildering to practice.

                    E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

 

 

 

 

 

Aloha

In Hawaii they say, "aloha." That's a nice one.
It means both "hello" and "good-bye"
Which just goes to show, if you spend enough time in the sun
you don't know whether you're coming or going.

                George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty

Immortality

Untitled
By Sappho

Although they are

Only breath, words
which I command
are immortal.

       Translated by Mary Barn

 

 

 

 

What matters

Everything matters more than we think it does,
and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does.
The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze,
but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over,
the world will wag itself right again.

                                Samuel Butler, Sparks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Importance

Nothing is rarer than giving no importance to things that have none.

                    Paul Valéry, in Pretexts, by André Gide

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thelonious Monk’s 25 Tips for Musicians

As transcribed by saxophonist Steve Lacy

Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to keep time.

Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.

Stop playing all that bullshit, those weird notes, play the melody!

Make the drummer sound good.

Discrimination is important.

You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?

All reet!

Always know

It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn’t need the lights.

Let’s lift the band stand!!

I want to avoid the hecklers.

Don’t play the piano part, I am playing that. Don’t listen to me, I am supposed to be accompanying you!

The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.

Don’t play everything (or everytime); let some things go by. Some music just imagined.

What you don’t play can be more important than what you do play.

A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.

Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.

When you are swinging, swing some more!

(What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as possible!

Always leave them wanting more.

Don’t sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene.

Those pieces were written so as to have something to play & to get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal!

You’ve got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (to a drummer who didn’t want to solo).

Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like himself.

They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.

Poem: Stay Up Late on New Year's Eve

The old year is parting,
Like a snake slithering into a deep ravine.
Scales barely seen; none could stop its course.
Try as hard as we might to grab its tail, but in vain.
Children strive to stay awake, laugh and play all night long.
Rooster, please don’t crow yet, but the morning drum is urging.
The lamp has burnt out, and the Big Dipper descends on the horizon.
Year after year, time flies and my worries are futile.
Better to cherish this night, and I still have the spirit of a young man.

                        Su Shi (960 – 1127)

 

The Chinese New Year begins on January 22 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More taxi driver wisdom

I’m going to tell you something my dad taught me when I was a kid:
If you do your job at the best of your ability, you have no competition.

                    Larry Bowles, Charlottesville (VA) Weekly

 

 

 

 

 

Surprised and puzzled

The miracle that so amazed Galileo and Arnauld —
        and still amazes me, I can’t understand it —
            is how can we, with a few symbols,
                    convey to others the inner workings of our mind?
That’s something to really be surprised about, and puzzled by.
        And we have some grasp of it, but not a lot.

                                Noam Chomsky, The Secrets of Words 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wisdom

If you want to build a ship,
        don't drum up the men to gather wood,
                divide the work and give orders.
Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

                 Attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

 

 

 

Family heirlooms

Heirlooms we don't have in our family.
             But stories we've got.

                    Rose Cherin, Family Therapies: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal

 

 

 

 

 

From neighborhood to brotherhood

The world in which we live is geographically one.
The great challenge now is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

Now it is true that the geographic togetherness of our world
has been brought into being, to a large extent,
through modern man's scientific ingenuity.
Modern man, through his scientific genius,
has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains.

Yes, we've been able to carve highways through the stratosphere,
and our jet planes have compressed into minutes
distances that once took weeks and months.
And so this is a small world from a geographical point of view.

What we are facing today is the fact that through our scientific
and technological genius we've made of this world a neighborhood.

And now through our moral and ethical commitment
we must make of it a brotherhood.
We must all learn to live together as brothers -
or we will all perish together as fools.

This is the great issue facing us today.
No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone.
We are tied together.

        The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., June 1965
        Commencement Address, Oberlin College 

Poem: The Word of God

Arise,
you are a word in the mouth of God:
Unstoppable.
You are a word pouring forth beginnings,
unstoppable like early spring rivers.
Pouring forth beginnings you are noisy.
Like early spring rivers you are bright and dangerous.
You are noisy in the mouth of God.
You are bright and dangerous:
Arise.

                    Laura Gail Grohe 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Dog Training

Sometimes I think
the only lessons I ever learned
were from my dogs.
So here is the accumulated wisdom
of Sancho, Max, and Zorba,
three sage Airedales:

First, yelp when you're in pain
but let it go when it's gone.

Second, travel the earth
with a quivering nose.

Third, answer the needs of your body
with shameless relish
but then go right on
to the real purpose of the day: play.

And finally, whenever possible
leap right
into the arms of someone
who loves you.

             Bonnie Lyons