Hold on

When I was younger, I thought I could change this world.
    Now I no longer think so but for emotional reasons
        I must keep on fighting a holding action.

                Robert Heinlein, Friday 

 

 

 

 

 

Working it out

If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anybody bow down or stand up to Him.
I have often a suspicion God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished.

        Rebecca West, interview in The Paris Review

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Always Marry an April Girl

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true —
I love April, I love you.

        Ogden Nash

 

 

 

 

 

False equivalance

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been.
The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread
winding its way through our political and cultural life,
nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that
“my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

        Isaac Asimov, “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek magazine 1980 

 

 

 

 

 

How to take it

The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.

    Michael Faraday, Treasury of the Christian Faith, Stuber and Clark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Routine

There’s birth, there’s death,
    and in between there’s maintenance.

        Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates 

 

 

 

Madness

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog;
fewer when pursued by a mad woman;
only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

        Robertson Davies, Marchbanks’ Almanack 

 

 

 

 

 

Earth Day

Something shines out,
a truth so self-evident that the words dictate themselves.

We’re cashing in a billion years of planetary savings bonds
and blowing it on assorted bling.

            Richard Powers, The Overstory

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earth Day

The eyes of the future are looking back at us
and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.
They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint,
that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come.
To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle.
Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats,
the silent space that says we live only by grace.
Wilderness lives by this same grace.
Wild mercy is in our hands.

    Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Passover Remembered

Pack Nothing.
Bring only your determination to serve
and your willingness to be free.

Don't wait for the bread to rise.
Take nourishment for the journey,
but eat standing, be ready
to move at a moment's notice.

Do not hesitate to leave
your old ways behind—
fear, silence, submission.

Only surrender to the need
of the time— to love
justice and walk humbly
with your God.

Do not take time to explain to the neighbors.
Tell only a few trusted friends and family members.

Then begin quickly,
before you have time to sink back
into the old slavery.

Set out in the dark.
I will send fire to warm and encourage you.
I will be with you in the fire
and I will be with you in the cloud.

You will learn to eat new food
and find refuge in new places.
I will give you dreams in the desert
to guide you safely home to that place
you have not yet seen.

The stories you tell one another around your fires
in the dark will make you strong and wise.

Outsiders will attack you,
and some who follow you,
and at times you will weary
and turn on each other
from fear and fatigue and
blind forgetfulness.

You have been preparing for this for hundreds of years.
I am sending you into the wilderness to make a way
and to learn my ways more deeply.

Those who fight you will teach you.
Those who fear you will strengthen you.
Those who follow you may forget you.
Only be faithful. This alone matters.

Some of you will die in the desert,
for the way is longer than anyone imagined.
Some of you will give birth.

Some will join other tribes along the way,
and some will simply stop and create
new families in a welcoming oasis.

Some of you will be so changed
by weathers and wanderings
that even your closest friends
will have to learn your features
as though for the first time.
Some of you will not change at all.

Some will be abandoned
by your dearest loves
and misunderstood by those
who have known you since birth
and feel abandoned by you.

Some will find new friendship
in unlikely faces, and old friends
as faithful and true as the pillar of God's flame.

Wear protection.
Your flesh will be torn
as you make a path
with your bodies
through sharp tangles.
Wear protection.

Others who follow may deride
or forget the fools who first bled
where thorns once were, carrying them
away in their own flesh.

Such urgency as you now bear
may embarrass your children
who will know little of these times.

Sing songs as you go,
and hold close together.
You may at times grow
confused and lose your way.

Continue to call each other
by the names I've given you,
to help remember who you are.
You will get where you are going
by remembering who you are.

Touch each other
and keep telling the stories
of old bondage and of how
I delivered you.

Tell you children lest they forget
and fall into danger— remind them
even they were not born in freedom
but under a bondage they no longer
remember, which is still with them, if unseen.

Or they were born in the open desert
where no signposts are.

Make maps as you go,
remembering the way back
from before you were born.

So long ago you fell
into slavery, slipped
into it unawares,
out of hunger and need.

You left your famished country
for freedom and food in a new land,
but you fell unconscious and passive,
and slavery overtook you as you fell
asleep in the ease of your life.

You no longer told stories of home
to remember who you were.

Do not let your children sleep
through the journey's hardship.
Keep them awake and walking
on their own feet so that you both
remain strong and on course.

So you will be only
the first of many waves
of deliverance on these
desert seas.

It is the first of many
beginnings— your Paschaltide.
Remain true to this mystery.

Pass on the whole story.
I spared you all
by calling you forth
from your chains.

Do not go back.
I am with you now
and I am waiting for you.

         Alla Renee Bozarth

How the world works

I sense the world might be more dreamlike,
metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe ―
but just as irrational as sympathetic magic
when looked at in a typically scientific way.
I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--
poetry in the broadest sense,
in the sense of a world filled with metaphor,
rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs ―
is how the world works.
The world isn't logical, it's a song.

        David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries

 

 

 

 

Smart kid

Older boys often asked me to teach them
“some bad words in your language.”
At first I politely refused.
My refusal merely increased their determination,
so I solved the problem by teaching them phrases
like “man kharam” which means “I’m an idiot.”

Firoozeh Dumas, Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America 

 

 

 

 

 

The earth is flat

The great obstacle to discovering
    the shape of the earth, the continents, and the ocean
        was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

                Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunate repetition

Suppose you were an idiot.
    And suppose you were a member of Congress.
        But I repeat myself.

            Mark Twain, in Mark Twain: A Biography, Albert Bigelow Paine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Treasure

Whether happy or unhappy, 

    life is the only treasure man possesses.

            Giacomo Casanova, The Story of My Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the world turns

Well -- well, the world must turn upon its axis,
   And all of mankind turn with it, heads or tails,
And live and die, make love and pay our taxes...

    From "Don Juan' by Lord Byron 

Remember

Remember
that you have only one soul;
that you have only one death to die;
that you have only one life,
which is short and has to be lived by you alone;
and there is only one Glory, which is eternal.
If you do this,
there will be many things
about which you care nothing.

    Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Complete works of Saint Teresa of Jesus Volume III

 

 

 

Poem: The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska

Too bad you weren’t here six months ago,
was a lament I heard on my visit to Nebraska.
You could have seen the astonishing spectacle
of the sandhill cranes, thousands of them
feeding and even dancing on the shores of the Platte River.

There was no point in pointing out
the impossibility of my being there then
because I happened to be somewhere else,
so I nodded and put on a look of mild disappointment
if only to be part of the commiseration.

It was the same look I remember wearing
about six months ago in Georgia
when I was told that I had just missed
the spectacular annual outburst of azaleas,
brilliant against the green backdrop of spring

and the same in Vermont six months before that
when I arrived shortly after
the magnificent foliage had gloriously peaked,
Mother Nature, as she is called,
having touched the hills with her many-colored brush,

a phenomenon that occurs, like the others,
around the same time every year when I am apparently off
in another state, stuck in a motel lobby
with the local paper and a styrofoam cup of coffee,
busily missing God knows what.

                                Billy Collins

The rabbit hole of measurements

From a list of humorous units of measurement on Wikipedia

Helen (beauty)
Helen of Troy (from the Iliad) is widely known as the face that launched a thousand ships.
Thus, 1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship.
Other derived units such as the negative helen (the power to beach ships) have also been described.

Bee's dick
An Australian term for a very small distance, as in,
"He missed crashing into the truck by a bee’s dick."
It is derived from the presumed small size of a male bee's penis. 

Lots more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement

 

Fascinating

People are much more fascinated by your interests
        than they are by your opinions.

            Arlene Francis, That Certain Something: The Magic of Charm

 

 

 

 

 

Precious resources

Trust and integrity are precious resources,
        easily squandered, hard to regain.

                Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keep this in mind when you are stuck in traffic

People on horses look better than they are.
    People in cars look worse than they are.

            Marya Mannes, More in Anger 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Progress

The march of human progress seemed mainly
    a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.

            Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

 

 

 

 

 

Heaven on earth

On Earth there is no heaven, 

        but there are pieces of it.

                    Jules Renard, Journal

 

 

 

Poem: Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

        

                Edna St. Vincent Millay

Simple

It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good.

        Helen Keller, The Simplest Way to be Happy

 

 

 

 

One thing he can do

[About the organizing of the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott.
  E.D Nixon, civil rights leader and union organizer
 Rufus A. Lewis, civil rights activist and politician
 JoAnn Robinson, educator and civil rights activist
 Fred Gray, civil rights attorney
 The pastor is Martin Luther King Jr.]

They needed someone who could get Nixon and Lewis to work together, appeal to Black people from all parts of the city, present a respectable image to the press, and handle negotiations well. Robinson and Gray discussed selecting a preacher for the job. But which one?

“Well, Fred,” Robinson said, “my pastor hasn’t been here long. But one thing he can do, he can move people with his words.”

King: A Life, Jonathan Eig 

 

 

 

 

 

The simple life

To find the universal elements enough;
to find the air and the water exhilarating;
to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter...
to be thrilled by the stars at night;
to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring —
these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

        John Burroughs, Leaf and Tendril

 

 

 

 

April Fool

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself —
        and you are the easiest person to fool.

                Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!