Against mediocrity

But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something?
Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you.
Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.

            Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

 

 

 

 

 

April showers

For after all, the best thing one can do
When it is raining, is to let it rain.

        Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Birds of Killingworth

 

 

 

Something and nothing

Because deep in my heart, I know there is always something to write about,
but there is also always nothing - and terrifyingly little air between.

                Nick Cave, Red Hand Files 286

 

 

 

 

 

Awesome

Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

                 Abraham Joshua Heschel, Who Is Man?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: blessing the boats

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back   may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that 

                Lucille Clifton    

 

 

 

 

 

Choose

[Optimism] is not about providing a recipe for self-deception.
The world can be a horrible, cruel place,
and at the same time it can be wonderful and abundant.
These are both truths.
There is not a halfway point;
there is only choosing which truth to put in your personal foreground.

        Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

 

 

 

 

 

More is better

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

                Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment 

 

 

 

 

Isn't it obvious?

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

        Arthur Conan Doyle, The Boscombe Valley Mystery 

 

 

 

 

 

Sleep in

Progress doesn't come from early risers—
progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

            Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

 

 

 

 

The end?

Never think you've seen the last of anything

        Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter

 

 

 

 

Keep working on it

Religion will not regain its old power
until it can face change
in the same spirit as does science.
Its principles may be eternal,
but the expression of those principles
requires continual development.

        Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

 

 

 

 

Poem: April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

                Langston Hughes

 

 

 

 

 

Make it count

I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.

        Arthur Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing artificial about it

Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

        Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

 

 

 

 

Play ball

Didn't come up here to read. Came up here to hit. 

Hank Aaron to catcher Yogi Berra, who told him to turn his bat around so he could see the trademark during the 1957 World Series, Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes 

 

 

 

 

Enough

Somebody once said we never know
    what is enough until we know
        what's more than enough.

                Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

 

 

 

 

The simple life

I could enjoy the simple life
with a small living quarters,
a scratched album of Johnny Cash
and a Box of Twinkies

        Stanley Victor Paskavich, Return to Stantasyland

        [Continental Bakery created Twinkies April 6, 1930]

 

 

 

 

 

Practice 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: Matzah

Flat you are as a door mat
and as homely.
No crust, no glaze, you lack
a cosmetic glow.
You break with a snap.
You are dry as a twig
split from an oak
in midwinter.
You are bumpy as a mud basin
in a drought.
Square as a slab of pavement,
you have no inside
to hide raisins or seeds.
You are pale as the full moon
pocked with craters.

What we see is what we get
honest, plain, dry
shining with nostalgia
as if baked with light
instead of heat.
The bread of flight and haste
In the mouth you promise, home.

            Marge Piercy 

 

 

 

 

Gods in hiding

We must look at ourselves differently.
We are freer than we think.
We haven't begun to live yet.
The man whose light has come on in his head,
in his dormant sun, can never be kept down or defeated.
We can redream this world and make the dream real.
Human beings are gods hidden from ourselves.

        Ben Okri, The Famished Road

 

 

 

 

 

An unpaid debt

There’s no way to repay a mother’s love, or lack of it.

    Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook

 

 

 

 

Keep the appointed time

Now the LORD spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai,
in the first month of the second year
after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying:
"Let the children of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time.
"On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight,
you shall keep it at its appointed time.
According to all its rites and ceremonies you shall keep it."

            Book of Numbers, chap. 9, verse 1-3

 

 

 

 

 

Best April Fools joke

 

 

From an ad in six leading US newspapers April 1, 1996

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a puzzlement

There's something in the human personality
which resents things that are clear,
and conversely, something which is attracted
to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.

    Stanley Kubrick, Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze

 

 

 

 

 

Silence

Silence is the general consecration of the universe.
Silence is the invisible laying on
of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world.
Silence is at once the most harmless
and the most awful thing in all nature.
It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate.
Silence is the only Voice of our God.

        Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: On Clothes

And the weaver said, Speak to us of Clothes.
     And he answered:
     Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
     And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
     Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,
     For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.

     Some of you say, “It is the north wind who has woven the clothes we wear.”
     And I say, Ay, it was the north wind,
     But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.
     And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.
     Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.
     And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?
     And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

                    Kahlil Gibran 

A recipe for life

David Frost:
What would you like people to think about you when you've gone?

Muhammad Ali:
I'd like for them to say:
He took a few cups of love.
He took one tablespoon of patience,
One teaspoon of generosity,
One pint of kindness.
He took one quart of laughter,
One pinch of concern.
And then, he mixed willingness with happiness.
He added lots of faith,
And he stirred it up well.
Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime,
And he served it to each and every deserving person he met.

        From a 1974 interview with David Frost

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Frost: What would you like people to think about you when you've gone? Muhammad Ali: I'd like for them to say: He took a few cups of love. He took one tablespoon of patience, One teaspoon of generosity, One pint of kindness. He took one quart of laughter, One pinch of concern. And then, he mixed willingness with happiness. He added lots of faith, And he stirred it up well. Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime, And he served it to each and every deserving person he met.” — Muhammad Ali "Recipe of life" video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7iPACdA1HQ Interview with David Frost (1974)

Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1831295-muhammad-ali-david-frost-what-would-you-like-people-to-think-a/

The way you are

The moment when you really experience
that you have created yourself being whatever way you are,
at that same moment you will never have to be that way again.

Werner Erhard
Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, William Bartley

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opening day

Baseball is not life.
It is a fiction, a metaphor.
And a ballplayer is a man
who agrees to uphold that metaphor
as though lives were at stake.

        David James Duncan, The Brothers K

 

 

 

 

Celebrity

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.
As soon as one is aware of being “somebody” to be watched
and listened to with extra interest, input ceases,
and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation.
One can either see or be seen.

        John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What we want

Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted.
I know what women want.
They want a whole lot of people to talk to.
What do men want?
They want a lot of pals,
and they wish that people wouldn’t get so mad at them.

        Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open to wonder

Instead of indulging in jealousy, greed, in relishing themselves,
there are men who keep their hearts alert to the stillness
in which time rolls on and leaves us behind. …
those who are open to the wonder will not miss it.
Faith is found in solicitude for faith,
in an inner care for the wonder that is everywhere.

        Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Holy Dimension

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Begin

Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of the light at the window,
begin to the roar of morning traffic
all along Pembroke Road.
Every beginning is a promise
born in light and dying in dark
determination and exaltation of springtime
flowering the way to work.
Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
bridges linking the past and future
old friends passing though with us still.
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
begin to wonder at unknown faces
at crying birds in the sudden rain
at branches stark in the willing sunlight
at seagulls foraging for bread
at couples sharing a sunny secret
alone together while making good.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.

                    Brendan Kennelly 

 

 

 

 

 

World Water Day

If there is magic on this planet,
    it is contained in water.

            Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey

 

 

 

 

 

 

March Madness continued

A few years ago, Kobe [Bryant, duh] fractured the fourth metacarpal bone in his right hand. He missed the first fifteen games of the season; he used the opportunity to learn to shoot jump shots with his left, which he has been known to do in games. While it was healing, the ring finger, the one adjacent to the break, spend a lot of time taped to his pinkie. In the end, Kobe discovered, his four fingers were no longer evenly spaced; now they were separated, two and two. As a result, his touch on the ball was different, his shooting percentage went down. Studying the film he noticed that his shots were rotating slightly to the right.

To correct the flaw, Kobe went to the gym over the summer and made one hundred thousand shots. that's one hundred thousand made, not taken. He doesn't practice taking shots, he explains. He practices making them. If you're clear on the difference between the two ideas, you can start drawing a bead on Kobe Bryant who may well be one of the most misunderstood figures in sports today.

Mike Sager, Esquire Magazine, 2007

March Madness

I would not sell my soul to be playing college ball somewhere in this country tonight, but I would give it long and serious consideration.

Pat Conroy, My Losing Season: A Memoir

 

 

 

 

Drown your shamrock

Once upon a time at a pub, Patrick ordered a whiskey, but was shocked and offended when the bartender’s pour did not fill his glass. He said the man had a devil in his cellar feeding on his dishonesty, so he’d best get his act together. The man immediately changed his ways. Like Scrooge on Christmas Day, he became the guy who filled everyone’s glass to the rim.

Today that story is remembered in the “Drowning of the Shamrock.” Each St. Patrick’s Day at the very end of the night, shamrocks are dunked into the last round of drinks (ideally whiskey) and a toast is offered to St. Patrick, in honor of his preferential option for the full pour.

        Jim McDermott, America, The Jesuit Review, 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's not just basketball

When you think you have done enough, do a little more,
because someone out there is working harder than you.

            Larry Bird, When the Game Was Ours

 

 

 

The ides of March

And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Emperor Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius [coin] and let me see it.” And they brought one. Then he said to them, “Whose image is this, and whose title?” They answered, “Caesar’s.” Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

                                12:14-17; Matthew 22:15-22; Luke 20:20-26


Diverse interpreters have speculated for ages about what it is that Jesus is saying belongs to God and should be given to God. Our spiritual virtues perhaps? Our immortal souls? Our tithes? Our life commitments? Our moral conscience? Our conformance to church law? Through history, “give to Caesar” has confused preachers and canon lawyers who apologized for Caesar’s needful claim on much of a Christian’s life.

But mystery writer [Dorothy] Sayers discovered that the dialog poses and solves a riddle. Jesus holds up the Roman coin, asking whose image it bears. Caesar’s image is how we recognize its owner, they reply. Then what belongs to God must have the same proof. What bears God’s image? You and I do: our whole human selves, as Genesis 2 declares. Then give your whole self to God, because you bear God’s image.

                Rick Fabian, Jesus and Paul Woven Together 

Poem: Domestic Bliss

A love affair is something to survive.
This is a relationship -
something to keep tidy.

So my love for you reveals itself
In my exceptionally thorough grocery lists
And I know how much you love me when
You scrub out the shower
Two weekends in a row.

I am a romantic janitor,
Performing constant maintenance
on my happiness.

Give me a kiss.
I just took out the trash
And swept the sidewalk.

                Patrick Califia 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patience

Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting,
but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap
and stands confident in the storms of spring
without the fear that after them may come no summer.
It does come. But it comes only to the patient,
who are there as though eternity lay before them,
so unconcernedly still and wide.
I learn it daily, learn it with pain
to which I am grateful: patience is everything!

        Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Language

Language is courage:
the ability to conceive a thought,
to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

    Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

 

 

 

 

A winning hand

Life is not always a matter of holding good cards,
    but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

        Dan Millman, Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior

 

 

 

 

 

Treat yourself

One of the secrets of a happy life
    is continuous small treats,
        and if some of these can be inexpensive
            and quickly procured so much the better.

                Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A distinction

Mobilizing is about getting people to do a thing,
    and organizing is about getting people to become
        the kind of people who do what needs to be done.

                Hahrie Han, The New Yorker, October 2024

Spring forward

I object to being told that I am saving daylight
when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind...
At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme,
I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism,
eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier,
to make them healthy, wealthy, and wise in spite of themselves.

        Robertson Davies, The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks

 

 

 

 

International Women's Day

 Join the union, girls, 

        and together say  

                Equal Pay for Equal Work.

                            Susan B. Anthony, The Revolution

 

 

 

 

  

Poem: Dear March—Come in—

Dear March—Come in—
How glad I am—
I hoped for you before—
Put down your Hat—
You must have walked—
How out of Breath you are—
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—
Did you leave Nature well—
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—
I have so much to tell—

I got your Letter, and the Birds—
The Maples never knew that you were coming—
I declare - how Red their Faces grew—
But March, forgive me—
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue—
There was no Purple suitable—
You took it all with you—

Who knocks? That April—
Lock the Door—
I will not be pursued—
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied—
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come

That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame—

            Emily Dickinson 

The way home

Actually, I doubt that it was "progress" that most interested [physicist] Richard [Feynman]. He was always searching for patterns, for connections, for a new way of looking at something, but I suspect his motivation was not so much to understand the world as it was to find new ideas to explain. The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to someone else.

I remember a conversation we had a year or so before his death, walking in the hills above Pasadena. We were exploring an unfamiliar trail and Richard, recovering from a major operation for the cancer, was walking more slowly than usual. He was telling a long and funny story about how he had been reading up on his disease and surprising his doctors by predicting their diagnosis and his chances of survival. I was hearing for the first time how far his cancer had progressed, so the jokes did not seem so funny. He must have noticed my mood, because he suddenly stopped the story and asked, "Hey, what's the matter?"

I hesitated. "I'm sad because you're going to die."

"Yeah," he sighed, "that bugs me sometimes too. But not so much as you think." And after a few more steps, "When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you've told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway."

We walked along in silence for a few minutes. Then we came to a place where another trail crossed and Richard stopped to look around at the surroundings. Suddenly a grin lit up his face.

"Hey," he said, all trace of sadness forgotten, "I bet I can show you a better way home."

And so he did.

        Danny Hillis, Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine, longnow.org

Flexibility

The willow which bends to the tempest
often escapes better than the oak which resists it.

    Walter Scott, The Works of Sir Walter Scott: The pirate 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm thinking!

It’s not always easy to tell the difference
between thinking and looking out of the window.

        Wallace Stevens, Letters

 

 

 

 

Why there are so few great artists

Waiting is one of the great arts.

        Margery Allingham, The Tiger In The Smoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

March winds

The wind is rising...
    we must attempt to live.

        Paul Valery, Charmes. Le Cimetière Marin

 

 

 

Take it back

We cannot live securely in a world which is not our own,
in a world which is interpreted for us by others.
An interpreted world is not a home.
Part of the terror is to take back our own listening,
to put our ears to our own inner voices, to see our own light,
which is our birthright, and comes to us in silence.

        Hildegard of Bingen, Warrior of Light,
        by Elaine Bellezza, Gnosis magazine, 1991

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: The Fame Game

You have this need to be famous,
my therapist said, but I think
you should get a job first. If
you look at all the famous people,
they all had jobs. George Bush
never looks like he’s doing anything,
but he was once a President. You have
to start from somewhere. Otherwise
you’ll be famous inside
your own head, but so is everyone else.

            Hal Sirowitz

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doing one's duty

This story might be half-apocryphal, but apparently on May 19th, 1780, the sky went dark over Connecticut. We don’t know what blotted out the sun—probably some forest fires burning nearby—but the deeply Christian Connecticuters figured it was a sign the End Times had come. At the State House in Hartford, several senators suggested that everybody should return home and prepare to meet their Maker. 

Amidst the commotion, Senator Abraham Davenport of Stamford stood up and said: "I am against adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought." 

Candles were brought, and the work continued.

            Adam Mastroianni, Experimental History blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Age of Play

Childhood may be defined as the age of play;
    therefore some children are never young,
        and some adults are never old.

            Will Durant, Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War and God

 

 

 

 

 

S-U-C-C-E-S-S

Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. … We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play — and by “we” I mean society — in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.

        Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

 

 

 

 

It's not important

A great many worries can be diminished
    by realizing the unimportance
        of the matter which is causing the anxiety.

        Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness

 

 

 

 

 

Fly on

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm.
Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.
You can’t stop the plane, you can’t stop the storm, you can’t stop time.
So one might as well accept it calmly, wisely.

        Golda Meir, 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci

 

 

 

Who God has

There are many outside the church who seem to be inside,
there are many inside the church who seem to be outside...
There are some whom the church has whom God has not,
there are some whom God has whom the church has not.

                Attributed to St. Augustine

 

 

 

A Birthday Poem

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

        Ted Kooser 

 

 

 

 

 

Choose your philosphy

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools —
the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans —
and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase,
“You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him,
and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.”

        Terry Pratchett, Small Gods 

 

 

 

 

 

An event more fair

To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations,
though friends are, if possible, an event more fair.

        Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd

 

 

 

 

Pay attention

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

        Simone Weil, Simone Weil: A Life

 

 

 

 

Good to remember

Those who are made can be unmade.

        Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

 

 

 

 

President's Day

Michael: My father's no different than any other powerful man –
any man who's responsible for other people, like a senator or a president.

Kay: You know how naïve you sound?

Michael: Why? 

Kay: Senators and presidents don't have men killed. 

Michael: Oh. Who's being naïve, Kay?  

     Dialogue from The Godfather movie, Francis Ford Coppola & Mario Puzo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hymn: God is Love

God is Love, let heaven adore him;
God is Love, let earth rejoice;
let creation sing before him
and exalt him with one voice.
God who laid the earth’s foundation,
God who spread the heaven above,
God who breathes through all creation:
God is Love, eternal Love.

God is Love; and Love enfolds us,
all the world in one embrace:
with unfailing grasp God holds us,
every child of every race.
And when human hearts are breaking
under sorrow’s iron rod,
then we find that selfsame aching
deep within the heart of God.

God is Love; and though with blindness
sin afflicts all human life,
God’s eternal loving-kindness
guides us through our earthly strife.
Sin and death and hell shall never
o’er us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
o’er the universe must reign.

        Timothy Rees

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Tree Heart/True Heart

The hearts of trees
are serially displaced
pressed annually
outward to a ring.
They aren’t really
what we mean
by hearts, they so
easily acquiesce,
willing to thin and
stretch around some
upstart green. A
real heart does not
give way to spring.
A heart is true.
I say no more springs
without you.

        Kay Ryan 

 

 

 

 

 

Anxiety and courage

Anxiety is the unwillingness to play
    even when you know the odds are for you.
Courage is the willingness to play
    even when you know the odds are against you.

        Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin 

 

 

 

 

 

The supreme test

Most people can bear adversity;
but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power.
This is the supreme test.

        Robert G. Ingersoll, speaking of Abraham Lincoln

 

 

 

 

 

Those who have eyes to see...

There are many who stumble in the noon-day,
    not for want of light, but for want of eyes.

        John Newton, The Works of the Rev. J. Newton

 

 

 

 

 

A moral issue

It’s a moral issue. A moral issue.
And to me that’s always much more interesting than a real issue.

            Elaine May in a routine with Mike Nichols

 

 

 

 

 

 

A skill to cultivate

Call me a romantic,
But I believe that there will be a future,
and indeed a long future, beyond 2027.
History will not end.
We need to cultivate the skill
of exact thinking in demented times.

        Dan Wang, December 2025 blog post

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What life?

What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God

            T.S. Eliot, from The Rock

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: February

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

            Margaret Atwood

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look upward

I avoid looking forward or backward,
and try to keep looking upward.
This is not the time to regret, dread, or weep.
What I have and ought to do
is very distinctly laid out for me;
what I want, and pray for, is strength to perform it.

    Charlotte Bronte, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell

 

 

 

 

 

A pricey question

Is there never any escaping the junkshop of the self?

        Ali Smith, Autumn 

 

 

 

 

Unintended consequences, or you never know when you will make a difference

I did not get on the bus to get arrested.
    I got on the bus to go home.

            Rosa Parks, Time magazine, 1999

Decisions, decisions

When I’m not sure whether something is okay to do,
I find it helps to give it the worst spin
in the bluntest language possible,
then judge it from there.

        Carolyn Hax, Washington Post advice column, January 2026 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Groundhog Day

Well, what if there is no tomorrow?! There wasn't one today!

            Phil Conners, in the movie Groundhog Day
            Written by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis.

Love your enemies and those who persecute you

The Story of Tony Cellini

When Kiryas V’Yoel Moshe — Satmar Bungalows — opened in Sullivan County more than 20 years ago, the Thompson town supervisor was an unabashed, raging anti-Semite named Tony Cellini. As chief executive of the municipality, he had full control over most important town functions, and made no secret of his intent to block Jews at every turn. Cellini explicitly declared his contempt of Jews numerous times, and flexed every form of interference he could — preventing applications to open a grocery or even denying permits for minor repairs.

A group of leading askanim gathered to strategize removing Cellini from office. At the meeting, a young Moishe Indig asserted that political opposition was the wrong approach. “It’s impossible to get rid of him, he’s too well-liked in town,” he told the others. “The only solution is to work on winning him over.”

Indig was laughed out of the room — the idea was as farfetched as convincing Yahya Sinwar to open a kollel.

Indig took matters into his own hands.

He went to the municipal building to try to talk to Cellini, and stood in the doorway of his office like Esther Hamalkah waiting to be noticed. When Cellini looked up, he began screaming and cursing at the young chassid, shouting about who let the Jew in. He personally threw the visitor out of the entire complex, shouting obscenities all the way.

Undeterred, a few days later, Indig waited for Cellini in the parking lot and tracked him to Walmart, where he schemed a “chance” encounter in an aisle.

The town supervisor didn’t recognize the Jew he had recently kicked out of his office, and Indig launched into his spiel without hesitation. “Hey, aren’t you Tony Cellini, the Tony Cellini, town supervisor?” he said, with obvious excitement. “So nice to see you here… the Jewish community here owes you such a big thank-you!”

Caught off guard, Cellini asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Indig plowed ahead, “it’s all thanks to you that we can enjoy summers with our families in this beautiful environment. You work so hard to keep the town nice and pleasant. All the surrounding towns are slummy dumps, but this one is gorgeous. Thank you! And you recruited Walmart to come here, which is so helpful….”

Who doesn’t warm up to a little flattery? Cellini sure did. “Yeah, and I got Home Depot to open here as well, and wait till you see what I’m working on next!” he agreed.

Pressing his advantage, Indig moved in for the snare. “You know, I think you should run for governor,” he said. “If you can accomplish so much on the local level, you are the right person the state needs to fix all the problems. Why waste your time in this little town? Our community will get behind you.”

Indig kept this up for a while, buttering up the nonplussed politician, until he was ready for the hook. “We must make an event honoring you for your accomplishments,” he said. “In our community, gratitude is mandatory. Let’s celebrate and break bread together!”

Moments later, Cellini was ushering Indig into his office — the same one he had tossed him out of days before — so that he could check his calendar and plan the party. He gave the askan his personal cell number, and set about inviting the sheriff and other officials to the event.

Indig walked out and called the other askanim. “In two weeks, we’re having a breakfast at my place honoring Tony Cellini.”

“Who?”

“Tony Cellini. You know… the anti-Semite?”

Cellini loved the breakfast gala, and barriers began to come down one after another. Indig took him to the local camp, where carefully prepped kids serenaded the supervisor. Next, they went to the Bobover institutions for similar pomp and circumstance.

One thing led to another, and Cellini became the greatest ally and oheiv Yisrael in town history. For the next twelve years, he eagerly helped wherever he could. After retiring from public office, he became a consultant for the Jewish community. He would freely start sentences with phrases like, “back when I was an anti-Semite…” or “We have to talk to so-and-so, he’s still an anti-Semite….”

Cellini’s close friendship with Indig continued until the former supervisor died several years ago. When Indig’s late wife was hospitalized, he chauffeured Indig’s family to and from the hospital, constantly offering to help in any way possible. During Tony’s own terminal illness and hospitalization at Mount Sinai Hospital (where Indig served as chaplain) for months before he died, the askan visited him daily. Cellini noticed that no one else visited or called — not even the current Thompson town supervisor, whom he had installed in office. “Moishe, I only have three true friends in the world,” he said one day. “You, Rabbi Hager, and David Walter, my three rabbis.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Jewish Family Weekly, Issue 1088)

Poem: Song

The world is full of loss; bring, wind, my love,
    my home is where we make our meeting-place,
    and love whatever I shall touch and read
    within that face.

Lift, wind, my exile from my eyes;
    peace to look, life to listen and confess,
    freedom to find to find to find
     that nakedness.

                    Muriel Rukeyser

 

 

 

Throw you weight on the scale

I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one’s weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can’t all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something. 

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is not overstated

When you overstate, the reader will be instantly on guard,
and everything that has preceded your overstatement
as well as everything that follows it will be suspect in his mind
because he has lost confidence in your judgment or your poise.

        E.B. White, The Elements of Style 

 

 

 

 

Remember this

It is well to remember that the entire universe,
        with one trifling exception,
                is composed of others.

        John Andrew Holmes, Wisdom in Small Doses 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Never say never

The man who never alters his opinion
is like standing water,
and breeds only reptiles of the mind.

    William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

 

 

 

 

Lost?

If you can find a path with no obstacles,
    it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.

            Frank A. Clark, The Country Parson cartoon caption

 

 

 

Declarations forever

I believe we must take our subtle spiritual intuitions seriously
and view them as the quintessence that underlies the ordinary world.
The rejection of the sacred is the fundamental reason for our existential discontent.
“I love you" and “I am sorry” spoken into the universe
are two sentiments forever worth declaring.

                Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files Issue #323

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Worst Day Ever?

Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don’t try to convince me that
There’s something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don’t last.
And it’s not true that
It’s all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be attained
Only if one’s surroundings are good
It’s not true that good exists
I’m sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It’s all beyond my control
And you’ll never in a million years hear me say
Today was a very good day

Now read it from bottom to top, the other way,
And see what I really feel about my day.

            Chanie Gorkin 

 

 

 

 

 

Simple

Gall’s law says: “A complex system that works is invariably
found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
A complex system designed from scratch never works
and cannot be patched up to make it work.
You have to start over with a working simple system.”

        John Gall, Systemantics

 

 

 

 

Inevitable

Celebrity is just obscurity biding its time.

        Carrie Fisher, Vanity Fair interview 2009

 

 

 

 

Fear of suffering

He who fears he shall suffer,
        already suffers what he fears.

                Michel de Montaigne, Essays

 

 

 

 

No kidding

One does not become fully human painlessly.

Rollo May, Foreword to Existential-Phenomenological Alternatives for Psychology

 

 

 

 

A change is gonna come

You know my friends, there comes a time
when people get tired of being trampled
by the iron feet of oppression.
There comes a time my friends,
when people get tired of being plunged
across the abyss of humiliation,
where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair.
There comes a time when people get tired
of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July
and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.
There comes a time.

    Martin Luther, King Jr., Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, December 1955

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.

            James Weldon Johnson 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Beyond the Bend in the Road (Para além da curva da estrada)

Beyond the bend in the road
there may be a well, a castle.
There may be simply more road.
I neither know nor ask.
As long as I’m on the road before the bend
I simply look at the road before the bend,
since I can see only the road before the bend.
It would do no good to look elsewhere
or at what I can’t see.
Let’s just concentrate on where we are.
There’s beauty enough in being here, not elsewhere.
If anyone’s there beyond the bend in the road,
let them worry about what’s beyond the bend in the road.
That is the road, to them.
If we arrive there when we arrive we’ll know.
Now we only know that we’re not there.
Here there’s only the road before the bend, and before the bend
there’s the road with no bend at all.

        Fernando Pessoa

 

 

 

 

A different angle

Debate doesn't really change things.
It gets you bogged in deeper.
If you can address or reopen the subject with something new,
something from a different angle, then there is some hope....

            Seamus Heaney, Paris Review 1997

 

 

 

 

First requirement

Maybe truly understanding the world requires participating in it.

        James Somers, Open Mind, The New Yorker, November 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Illusions

 Civilised life is based on a huge number of illusions
in which we all collaborate willingly.
The trouble is, we forget after a while
that they are illusions and
we are deeply shocked
when reality is torn down around us.

        J.G. Ballard, The Guardian interview 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The source of the problem

The way we see the problem is the problem.

        Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

 

 

 

Never give up

I suspect the most we can hope for,
and it's no small hope,
is that we never give up,
that we never stop giving ourselves permission
to try to love and receive love.

        Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me: A Novel

 

 

 

 

Who?

Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live.
He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions
about who God is and who God loves.

        Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?

 

 

 

 

Poem: The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

            Wendell Berry

 

 

 

 

 

Success and Failure

We are too much in awe of those who succeed
and far too dismissive of those who fail.
And, most of all, we become much too passive.
We overlook just how large a role we all play—
and by “we” I mean society—
in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.

        Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success 

 

 

 

 

It matters

If nothing matters,
it should not matter that nothing matters,
and yet it does matter.

        Irvin D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy

 

 

 

 

Remember this

A memory is a complicated thing,
    a relative to truth, but not its twin.

            Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

 

 

 

 

 

Words

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are.
They deserve respect.
If you get the right ones in the right order,
you might nudge the world a little or make a poem
that children will speak for you when you are dead.

        Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing

 

 

 

 

What's happening?

You live your life at the time you live it —
you don't have much of an overview
when what's happening to you is still happening.

        John Irving, In One Person: A Novel

 

 

 

 

How to have a perfect year

True perfection consists in the love of God and our neighbour,
and the better we keep both these commandments, the more perfect we shall be.

        Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Preparedness

For all your days prepare,
And meet them ever alike:
When you are the anvil, bear--
When you are the hammer, Strike.

        Edwin Markham

 

 

 

Permission to make mistakes

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes,
then you are making new things, trying new things,
learning, living, pushing yourself,
changing yourself, changing your world.
You’re doing things you’ve never done before,
and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

        Neil Gaiman, 2009 blog post 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year

Be at war with your vices,
    at peace with your neighbors,
        and let every new year find you a better man.

                Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack