Let it shine

What is to give light must endure burning.

        Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

 

 

 

 

The age of anxiety

You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control.
    But you never had control; all you had was anxiety.

            Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

 

 

 

 

 

Finders keepers

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive,
        but in finding something to live for.

                Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

 

 

 

What was He thinking?

I want to know how God created this world.
I'm not interested in this or that phenomenon,
in the spectrum of this or that element.
I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.

        Albert Einstein, "A Talk with Einstein," The Listener 54 (1955)

Poem: so you want to be a writer?

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

            Charles Bukowski 

 

 

 

 

Mistaken

The better a man is, the more mistakes will he make -
for the more new things he will try.
I would never promote a man into a top level job who had not made mistakes,
and big ones at that. Otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.

        Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management

 

 

 

Choose wisely

The model we choose to use to understand something determines what we find.

            Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary

 

 

 

Aging

Growing old's like being increasingly penalized
    for a crime you haven't committed.

        Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earth Day 2025

Every day is a Sabbath to me.
    All pure water is holy water,
        and this earth is a celestial abode.

                John Burroughs, Accepting the Universe

 

 

 

 

 

 

Never

One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.

        Robert Kennedy, 1964 address at the University of Pennsylvania 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The work of resurrection

The word "resurrection" has for many people the connotation
of dead bodies leaving their graves or other fanciful images.
But resurrection means the victory of the New state of things,
the New Being born out of the death of the Old.
Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future,
but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death,
here and now, today and tomorrow.

            Paul Tillich, The New Being

 

 

 

 

Poem: Easter

Once more the northbound Wonder
Brings back the goose and crane,
Prophetic Sons of Thunder,
Apostles of the Rain.

In many a battling river
The broken gorges boom;
Behold, the Mighty Giver
Emerges from the tomb!

Now robins chant the story
Of how the wintry sward
Is litten with the glory
Of the Angel of the Lord.

His countenance is lightning
And still His robe is snow,
As when the dawn was brightening
Two thousand years ago.

O who can be a stranger
To what has come to pass?
The Pity of the Manger
Is mighty in the grass!

Undaunted by Decembers,
The sap is faithful yet.
The giving Earth remembers,
And only we forget.

         John G. Neihardt

 

 

 

 

 

What are you waiting for?

I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be,
I'll be sending messages on a ouija board, cryptic comments from the other side.
When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision,
then it becomes less important whether or not I am unafraid.

        Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals

 

 

 

 

The essentials

Hair is the first thing.
    And teeth the second.
        Hair and teeth.
            A man got those two things he's got it all.

                    James Brown, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul 

 

 

 

 

Invitation to the dance

Unexpected invitations are dancing lessons from the Divine.

            Gary Jaron, Find Your Way

 

 

 

  

Bad timing

Death and taxes and childbirth!
There's never any convenient time for any of them.

        Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

 

 

 

 

The art of conversation

I’m a great believer in conversation as part of the artistic process.
I talked my way through 20 years of the Who’s career.

        Peter Townshend, New York Times interview, March 2024

 

 

 

 

 

Freedom

It is dangerous to take human freedom for granted,
to regard it as a prerogative rather than as an obligation,
as an ultimate fact rather than as an ultimate goal.
It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the fact of our being free.

        Abraham Joshua Heschel, Insecurity of Freedom

 

 

 

 

Poem: Passover

Tell me: how is this night different, from all other nights?
How, tell me, is this Passover, different from other Passovers?
Light the lamp, open the door wide, so the pilgrim can come in,
Gentile or Jew; under the rags perhaps the prophet is concealed.
Let him enter and sit down with us; let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate Passover;
Let him consume the bread of affliction, the Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and bitter herbs.
This is the night of differences, in which you lean your elbow on the table,
Since the forbidden becomes prescribed, evil is translated into good.
We will spend the night recounting, far-off events full of wonder,
And because of all the wine, the mountains will skip like rams.
Tonight they exchange questions: the wise, the godless, the simple-minded and the child.
And time reverses its course, today flowing back into yesterday,
Like a river enclosed at its mouth. Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,
Soaked straw and clay with sweat, and crossed the sea dry-footed.
You too, stranger. this year in fear and shame,
Next year in virtue and in justice.

        Primo Levi 

 

 

 

 

Now you tell us!

Good governance never depends upon laws,
but upon the personal qualities of those who govern.
The machinery of government is always subordinate
to the will of those who administer that machinery.
The most important element of government, therefore,
is the method of choosing leaders.

        Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

 

 

 

 

One man's theory

I've formulated a theory:
You have to continuously fail.
You fail at something, then you get over it,
then you fail some more.
And after you fail, there's always something new there.
And that something new can be really interesting.

        William Shatner, Esquire Magazine, May 2012

Good advice

Don’t sell your soul to buy peanuts for the monkeys.

        Dorothy Salisbury Davis, A Gentle Murderer

 

 

 

 

Safety first

Housework can't kill you,
        but why take a chance?
        
                Phyllis Diller, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes

 

 

 

 

 

Abandonment

When we don't listen to our intuition,
we abandon our souls.
And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don't,
others will abandon us.

Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

 

 

 

 

 

Ignorance is bliss

Religion enables us to ignore nothingness
        and get on with the jobs of life.

                John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

        Billy Collins

 

April is National Poetry Month

These times

These are times in which a genius would wish to live.
It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose
of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.
The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties.
Great necessities call out great virtues.
When a mind is raised, and animated by the scenes that engage the heart,
then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant,
wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

    Abigail Adams, in a letter to John Quincy Adams