Taking our measure

The measure of a country’s greatness
is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis.

        Thurgood Marshall, Furman vs. Georgia ruling 1972

 

 

 

 

Determining reality

The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.

        Ruth Nanda Anshen, Biography of an Idea

 

 

 

 

Rock on

Pop music tells you everything is okay,
while rock music tells you that it’s not okay,
but you can change it.

    Bono, 54th National Prayer Breakfast speech

 

 

 

 

More than the sum of the parts

It is too little to call Man a little world;
except God, man is a diminutive to nothing.
Man consists of more pieces, more parts,
than the world doth, nay, that the world is.

        John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

 

 

 

 

Poem: The Poet

She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb's
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not, she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
I cannot decipher. Her chair --
Let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,
the table. Let one or two she loves
be in the next room. Let the door
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.

         Jane Hirshfield

 

 

 

 

 

Results or Process

And I knew that who I was
was not entirely dependent on my results.
I am who I am because of who I am,
not because of the commodities I generate
or even the, you know, sacred objects that I generate.
I am not my results.
I am my process.

        Sara Gran, The Infinite Blacktop

 

 

 

Poem: May Day

A delicate fabric of bird song
Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
Is everywhere. 

Red small leaves of the maple
Are clenched like a hand,
Like girls at their first communion
The pear trees stand. 

Oh I must pass nothing by
Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
The grass with my touch; 

For how can I be sure
I shall see again
The world on the first of May
Shining after the rain?

Sara Teasdale