Get out the crash helmets

Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? The tourists are having coffee and doughnuts on Deck C. Presumably someone is minding the ship, correcting the course, avoiding icebergs and shoals, fueling the engines, watching the radar screen, noting weather reports radioed in from shore. No one would dream of asking the tourists to do these things. Alas, among the tourists on Deck C, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts, we find the captain, and all the ship’s officers, and all the ship’s crew. The officers chat; they swear; they wink a bit at slightly raw jokes, just like regular people. The crew members have funny accents. The wind seems to be picking up.

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

                                                        Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk 

 

 

 

Simple Verses

I have a white rose to tend
In July as in January;
I give it to the true friend
Who offers his frank hand to me.
And to the cruel one whose blows
Break the heart by which I live,
Thistle nor thorn do I give:
For him, too, I have a white rose.

    José Martí, Simple Verses


Cultivo una rosa blanca,
En julio como en enero,
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca.
Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo,
Cardo ni oruga cultivo
Cultivo una rosa blanca.

  José Martí, Versos Sencillos

 

 

 

 

Passport

If you know who you are,
        you can go anywhere.

            Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge

 

 

 

 

Wine for the soul

Laughter is wine for the soul –
        laughter soft, or loud and deep,
            tinged through with seriousness.

Comedy and tragedy step through life together,
        arm in arm, all along, out along, down along lea.

A laugh is a great natural stimulator, a pushful entry into life;
        and once we can laugh, we can live. 

It is the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.

                                    Seán O'Casey, The Green Crow

 

 

 

A word to the wise on Epiphany

The magi, as you know, were wise men —
        wonderfully wise men —
            who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger.

They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.

Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones,
        possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication.

And here I have lamely related to you
        the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat
              who most unwisely sacrificed for each other
                     the greatest treasures of their house.

But in a last word to the wise of these days
        let it be said that of all who give gifts
                these two were the wisest.

Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
        Everywhere they are wisest.
                They are the magi.

                                        O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twelfth Night

I am sure care's an enemy to life.

    William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Note: January 5th is the twelfth and final night of Christmas.
          In some places, it also marks the beginning of Carnival. 

 

 

 

 

World Braille Day

Like I've always said,
    love wouldn't be blind     
        if the braille weren't so damned much fun.

                Armistead Maupin, Maybe the Moon