Friends

You can learn a lot from your lovers,
but - for the most part -
you get to keep your friends longer,
and you learn more from them.

        John Irving, In One Person: A Novel

 

 

 

 

Known unknown

Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not.
People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.

    Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

 

 

 

Bitter knowledge

Of all men’s miseries the bitterest is this:
to know so much and to have control over nothing.

        Herodotus, The Histories

 

 

 

 

Reminder

We cannot all do everything.

        Virgil, Eclogues

Faith

Faith is not a certainty.
Faith is the courage to live with uncertainty.

        Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Case for God

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Waiting in Line

When you listen you reach
into dark corners and
pull out your wonders.
When you listen your
ideas come in and out
like they were waiting in line.
Your ears don’t always listen.
It can be your brain, your
fingers, your toes.
You can listen anywhere.
Your mind might not want to go.
If you can listen you can find
answers to questions you didn’t know.
If you have listened, truly
listened, you don’t find your
self alone.
 

    Nick Penna (who wrote this when he was nine years old)

 

 

 

 

The mysterious essence of life

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; it is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; 'life', something that had a mysterious essence about it, was God given, and that's the only explanation we had. The bombshell comes in 1859 when Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well.

    Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More than a feeling

Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.
If love were only a feeling,
there would be no basis for the promise
to love each other forever.

        Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

 

 

 

 

Temperatures rising

The moment people talk of "implementing" instead of "doing,"
and of "finalizing" instead of "finishing,"
the organization is already running a fever.

Peter F. Drucker, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World

 

 

 

The Shirky Principle

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.

     Kevin Kelly, quoting Clay Shirky in an article in The Technium

 

 

 

 

Imagination

Love alone is not enough.
Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom.
Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving
but because we first stopped imagining.

        James Hillman, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life

 

 

 

 

Wrong way

Of course I doubt [the existence of God], I would distrust anybody who didn't doubt. But I'm a believer. I have an understanding and belief in the divinity of things. It seems to me that people look at God in the wrong way. They think that God is there to serve them, but it's the other way around. God isn't some kind of cosmic bell-boy to be called upon to sort things out for us. It's important for us to realise that God has given us the potential to sort things out on our own. 

        Nick Cave, Observer interview 1998

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

                        Muriel Rukeyser

 

 

 

 

 

              

No good reason

It's an amazing thing to think that ours is the first generation in history that really can end extreme poverty, the kind that means a child dies for lack of food in its belly. That should be seen as the most incredible, historic opportunity but instead it's become a millstone around our necks. We let our own pathetic excuses about how it's "difficult" justify our own inaction. Be honest. We have the science, the technology, and the wealth. What we don't have is the will, and that's not a reason that history will accept.

Bono, 2004 interview, World Association of Newspapers for World Press Freedom Day

 

 

 

 

Games

God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round
    of Trivial Pursuit every now and again.

            Federico Fellini, I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon

 

 

 

 

 

Ancestors

You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor.
A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways.
But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions,
that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes.

                Richard Powers, The Overstory

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding

You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.

Rebecca Herold, Managing an Information Security and Privacy Awareness Training Program  

 

 

 

 

 

Bastille Day

An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions,
lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and darkness
still stands erect in this world,
with its towers of hatred.
It must be cast down.
This monstrous mass must be made to crumble.
To conquer at Austerlitz is grand;
to take the Bastille is immense.

        Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

 

 

 

 

 

Everyday spirituality

Elders serve as conduits between the divine realm and the mundane world,
making the abstract truths of spirituality accessible to the community
by embodying them in their everyday behavior.

        Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, From Age-Ing to Sage-Ing

 

 

 

 

Poem: The breeze at dawn

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

      Rumi  

Change

Not everything that is faced can be changed.
But nothing can be changed until it is faced. …
Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born,
and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

         James Baldwin, As Much Truth As One Can Bear

 

 

 

 

 

What is wanted

The teachers are everywhere.
What is wanted is a learner.

        Anne Lamott, What Are People For?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Explanation after the fact

The anthropologists are busy, indeed,
and ready to transport us back into the savage forest,
where all human things...have their beginnings;
but the seed never explains the flower.

            Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

 

 

 

 

 

Beauty

The beauty ain’t in the necklace.

        It’s in the neck.

             Adam Mastroianni, Experimental History blog, 28 rude notes on writing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What to do

What should young people do with their lives today?
Many things, obviously.
But the most daring thing is to create stable communities
in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

    Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday "Thoughts of a Free Thinker"

 

 

 

What is sacred?

Pagans exalt sacred things,
        the Prophets extol sacred deeds.

                    Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Earth Is The Lord's 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Answer July

Answer July—
Where is the Bee—
Where is the Blush—
Where is the Hay?

Ah, said July—
Where is the Seed—
Where is the Bud—
Where is the May—
Answer Thee—Me—

Nay—said the May—
Show me the Snow—
Show me the Bells—
Show me the Jay!

Quibbled the Jay—
Where be the Maize—
Where be the Haze—
Where be the Bur?
Here—said the Year—

            Emily Dickinson

 

 

 

 

 

Independence Day

The flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776,
have spread over too much of the globe
to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism;
on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, 1821

The American Dream

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity,
        the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream.
                They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

                                 Archibald MacLeish, Life magazine 1960 

 

 

 

Three wishes

Have a heart that never hardens,
    and a temper that never tires,
        and a touch that never hurts.

                Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big mistake

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery,
a metaphor for a proof,
a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths,
and oneself for an oracle,
is inborn in us.

        Paul Valery, The Method of Leonardo da Vinci