Bloody Sunday

I had a very moral view when I was younger.
I thought everybody cared.
I think it’s part of a Catholic upbringing,
that idea of universal solidarity.
That was a journey for me . . .
I didn’t think the government was bad.
I genuinely thought they just didn’t know
and if I just went to London to tell them, people would say,
‘Do you hear that young woman there? We need to do something about that.’
But then I realised: the bastards, they do know and not only do they know,
they don’t see anything wrong with it.

I care passionately about justice, about ideas, about principles.
I love this work I do now, working with people on the margins.
Living on the margins is where I get least bored.
My only interest in rules is to see how far they can be pushed.
I am always interested in the boundary beyond which we’re told things won’t work,
in where the tension is that requires change, to make those things work out there.

                Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Irish civil rights leader
                Excerpted from The Irish Times, September 2016

 

 

 

 

 

                    

The Mission of Non-violence

This is no appeal made by a man
who does not know his business.
I have been practising with scientific precision
non-violence and its possibilities
for an unbroken period of over fifty years.
I have applied it in every walk of life,
domestic, institutional, economic and political.
I know of no single case in which it has failed.
Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed,
I have ascribed it to my imperfections.
I claim no perfection for my self.
But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth,
which is but another name for God.
In the course of the search
the discovery of non-violence came to me.
Its spread is my life-mission.
I have no interest in living
except for the prosecution of that mission.

           Mahatma Gandhi, open letter "To Every Briton" 1940

 

 

 

 

 

Differences

Everyone has the same God;
only people differ.

             Anton Chekhov, The Duel

 

 

 

 

 

Why or what for

We're all alive, but we don't know why or what for;
we're all searching for happiness;
we're all leading lives that are different and yet the same.

             Anne Frank, diary entry 6 July 1944

 

 

 

 

 

Happily Ever After?

Did they live happily ever after?
They did not.
No one ever does, in spite of what the stories may say.
They had their good days, as you do,
and they had their bad days, and you know about those.
They had their victories, as you do,
and they had their defeats, and you know about those, too.
There were times when they felt ashamed of themselves,
knowing they had not done their best,
and there were times when they knew they had stood
where their God had meant them to stand.
All I’m trying to say is that they lived as well as they could.

                       Stephen King, The Eyes of the Dragon

 

 

 

 

 

Play

Psychiatrist Stuart Brown has proposed this simple definition:
"Play is spontaneous behavior that has no clear-cut goal
and does not conform to a stereotypical pattern.
The purpose of play is simply play itself;
it appears to be pleasurable."

In a study of 26 convicted murderers,
Brown discovered that as children, most of them had suffered
either "from the absence of play or abnormal play like bullying,
sadism, extreme teasing, or cruelty to animals."

Brown's work led him to explore the biological roots of play.
"New and exciting studies of the brain,
evolution, and animal behavior," he wrote,
"suggest that play may be as important to life --
for us and other animals -- as sleeping and dreaming."

                          Animals at Play, National Geographic

 

 

 

 

Poem: To the Not Impossible Him

How shall I know, unless I go

To Cairo and Cathay,

Whether or not this blessèd spot

Is blest in every way?

 

Now it may be, the flower for me

Is this beneath my nose;

How shall I tell, unless I smell

The Carthaginian rose?

 

The fabric of my faithful love

No power shall dim or ravel

Whilst I stay here,—but oh, my dear,

If I should ever travel!

 

                      Edna St. Vincent Millay

                      First Scheduled Transcontinental Flight
                      January 25, 1959