dual personalities

Category: Quotes

May 3, 2016

Happiness is…

by chuckofish

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

―Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

I have a pile of new and vintage books to read.

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What is better than that? A window with a nice view. Maybe someone bringing you a cup of tea or making dinner for you?

I guess I am getting old, but that sounds very good to me.

3 Comments
March 25, 2016

“The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.”

by chuckofish

“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.

What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God. ”

―Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

Easter is really early this year as you know, catching many of us semi-unawares. Where did Lent go? I have no excuses. But I “watched” for an hour last night in the darkened chapel as I do every year, keeping the vigil as the disciples did with our Lord in the garden. It is a meaningful exercise for me.

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The OM went with me so I wouldn’t be alone. (He didn’t fall asleep, but he looked at his phone like a good disciple.)

Today is Good Friday.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, College Station, PA

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, State College, PA

This has been a busy week at work and I have been distracted and inattentive to my spiritual routine. But the only path to the hope of Easter is through the struggle of Holy Week. We need to pay attention! Today I am hoping to leave work early and attend the Good Friday service at Noon. I frequently have good intentions of doing this, but then don’t. You know how that is.

Side note: daughter #2 was born on Easter Saturday and I remember sitting in the Good Friday service feeling weird and thinking something was going on. Sure enough, I went to the hospital that night and she was born the next morning.

Anyway, tonight we watch Ben Hur (1959) up to the intermission.

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We’ll watch the rest, starting with the chariot race, on Saturday night. On Sunday we’ll have a quiet brunch with the boy and daughter # 3 after church. What do you have planned?

“And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?”

–Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

4 Comments
March 23, 2016

Mid-week pep talk

by chuckofish

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“Once, during the Siege of Boston, when almost nothing was going right and General Schuyler had written from Albany to bemoan his troubles, Washington had replied that he understood but that ‘we must bear up against them, and make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish.’ It was such resolve and an acceptance of mankind and circumstances as they were, not as he wished them to be, that continued to carry Washington through. ‘I will not however despair,’ he now wrote to Governor William Livingston.”

―David McCullough, 1776   

Old George Washington certainly was the Man. And check out that leopard skin saddle blanket. Do you think he really had one like that? Here’s another look.

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Well, he certainly looked great on a horse. Thomas Jefferson called Washington “the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure to ever be seen on horseback.”

Equestrian statue of Gen. Washington in Washington D.C., executed by sculptor Clark Mills, and dedicated on February 22, 1860 by President Buchanan.

Statue of Gen. Washington on horseback in Washington D.C., executed by sculptor Clark Mills, and dedicated on February 22, 1860 by President Buchanan.

Who doesn’t love a good equestrian statue?

 

5 Comments
March 4, 2016

A woman at the sink

by chuckofish

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“My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the ‘stream of consciousness’ type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink. I felt resentful and bitter towards Helena and Rocky and even towards Julian, though I had to admit that nobody had compelled me to wash these dishes or to tidy this kitchen. It was the fussy spinster in me, the Martha who could not comfortably sit and make conversation when she knew that yesterday’s unwashed dishes were still in the sink.”

―Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

It’s been a busy week and I am looking forward to  my weekend. How about you?

3 Comments
February 10, 2016

Mid-week pep talk

by chuckofish

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“Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say ‘It is in me, and shall out.’ Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays

Oh man, when in doubt, read some Emerson. Isn’t he just the best?

And, by the way, don’t we all need one of these? Or we could have one made with a R.W. Emerson head.

And here’s a prayer to start the day by William Bright:

O Eternal Light, illuminate us; O eternal Power, strengthen us; O eternal Wisdom, instruct us; O eternal Mercy, have pity upon us; and grant us with all our hearts and minds to seek thy face, and to love thy name; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Prayer via here.)

3 Comments
January 27, 2016

Can I get an amen?

by chuckofish

President Theodore Roosevelt on a horse in Colorado; Photographer unknown; Around 1905

President Theodore Roosevelt on a horse in Colorado, c. 1905

“There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to “mean” horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose.”
―Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography 

Agreed, but I will always be afraid of grizzly bears no matter what and always.

5 Comments
January 20, 2016

Mid-week pep talk

by chuckofish

William Morris Hunt (1824-1879)

William Morris Hunt (1824-1879)

“We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.

Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don’t want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of ‘good time’ is seldom in sync with ours.”

–Oswald Chambers

3 Comments
November 24, 2015

How to win friends and influence people

by chuckofish

Dale Harbison Carnegie (originally Carnagey) (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer and lecturer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. He was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), a bestseller that remains popular today.

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You knew that, but did you now that he was born and raised in Missouri? Well, he was born in Maryville, Missouri, the son of a farmer. His family moved to Belton, Missouri (also the hometown of Harry Truman) when he was a small child. He graduated from the State Teacher’s College in Warrensburg, worked as a salesman, and moved to New York City. After failing as an actor (!), he taught a public speaking class at the YMCA. In his first session, he ran out of material. Improvising, he suggested that students speak about “something that made them angry” and discovered that the technique made speakers unafraid to address a public audience. From this 1912 début, the Dale Carnegie Course evolved.

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Most of what he said is just common sense.

“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”

“Success is getting what you want..Happiness is wanting what you get.”

“When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.”

“Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.”

“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.”

But that doesn’t make what he said any less true.

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Eminem who was born in nearby St. Joseph, MO, reading words of wisdom from his homeboy.

One more fun fact about Dale Carnegie: He worked as assistant to Lowell Thomas in his famous travelogue “With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia”. He managed and delivered the travelogue in Canada.

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Well, son of a gun. A toast to Dale Carnegie on his birthday and to T.E. Lawrence any old day!

6 Comments
September 23, 2015

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted (Danish artist, 1861-1933) Woman Reading by Candlelight 2

I have been re-reading some old favorites.

First I read One Fine Day by Mollie Painter-Downes, which I highly recommend. You will recall that between 1939 and 1945 Mollie Panter-Downes covered the war from England for the New Yorker. The action of this novel takes place all on one day in the summer of 1946 in a small village in England. It is a quiet meditation on how things change and how we adapt and how we still have so much to be grateful for.

“The country was tumbled out before her like the contents of a lady’s workbox, spools of green and silver and pale yellow, ribbed squares of brown stuff, a thread of crimson, a stab of silver, a round, polished gleam of mother of pearl. It was all bathed in magic light, the wonderful transforming light in which known things look suddenly new.”

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Now I am re-reading the wonderful Gilead by the great Marilynne Robinson. Basically it is a meditation by a dying minister, writing to his young son about his life and what it has meant to him.

“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

It is all about the beauty of the world and our lives here on earth. Wow.

“There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us.”

The new Jan Karon book, Come Rain or Come Shine, is out and I have ordered it. In this installment Dooley has graduated from vet school and opened his own animal clinic and is getting married. Sounds good to me.

What are you reading?

6 Comments
September 21, 2015

The days grow short when you reach September*

by chuckofish

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Daughter #2 is Southwestering back to Maryland today, so I will be crashing back to reality amidst a flurry of work-related activities. Truly the summer is over.

Sigh.

(Postcards from daughter #2’s visit tomorrow!)

*Kurt Weill

4 Comments