dual personalities

Category: Quotes

August 24, 2015

The whole armor of God

by chuckofish

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. 14 Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; 16 besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one.17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, 19 and also for me, that utterance may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

–Ephesians 6:10-20

Yesterday, I was the first lector and read the Old Testament lesson. It was  a good one from Joshua which included the verse about “as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” I also got to read the verse “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD…” which was amusing to me because “far be it from me” was a favorite way our put-upon father liked to start a sentence. It was right up there with “Be that as it may…” Have you noticed that we do not hear these expressions much anymore?

The second lesson was the above reading from Ephesians which is a really great one–We all need to remember it every morning before going out into the world.

On Saturday the OM and I loaded up the car with old computers and headed to the recycling event in O’Fallon, only to be caught in a terrible thunderstorm–the kind where most sane people on the highway have their emergency flashers on and are creeping along at 35 miles an hour. Zut alors! We got there and deposited our stuff, but we wisely decided against going to Clarksville and headed home instead.

Crazy kids that we are, we stopped and had brunch at Schneithorst’s.

Well, one more small step in  my basement clean-up/organization project. Mission accomplished.

I also emptied the tall bookcases in my bedroom, carrying the many, many heavy books into another bedroom, and vacuumed behind them (!) in anticipation of having the room painted and wallpapered. This was quite a job.

I had been trying to read this book, but gave up.

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It was a clever idea, but the main character did not engage me and ultimately she was annoying. She did not seem true to the mid-19th century and I can’t help thinking that she would have irritated the hell out of old Captain Ahab. Well-written, but…myeh.

I watched Ride With the Devil, did you? It was so good! These characters seemed very authentic and true to their time. I loved it.

And have you seen this video? There are bears in the pool! A mom and 5 cubs! In New Jersey! “What’s the mudder going to do?!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PnzrWJ-GnI

The little girl reminds me of daughter #1–“They’re eating my floatie!”

Have a good week and don’t forget to put on your breastplate of righteousness.

4 Comments
July 23, 2015

“Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn’t a game for knights.”*

by chuckofish

Happy birthday to Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959)–great writer and keen social commentator!

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“Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.”
—The Long Goodbye (written in 1953)

Haven’t I been saying this for years?

Have a good Thursday. Read some Chandler or watch Double Indemnity (1944). Drink a gimlet.

*The Big Sleep

4 Comments
July 21, 2015

One thing I don’t worry about

by chuckofish

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“Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”
“Yes, every once in a while.”
“Do you know that in about thirty- five more years we’ll be dead?”
“What the hell, Robert,” I said. “What the hell.”
“I’m serious.”
“It’s one thing I don’t worry about,” I said.
“You ought to.”
“I’ve had plenty to worry about one time or other. I’m through worrying.”
“Well, I want to go to South America.”
“Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
“But you’ve never been to South America.”
“South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don’t you start living your life in Paris?”

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961), American author and journalist, was born on this day 116 years ago in Oak Park, Illinois.

This flyover son sometimes reminds me of another midwestern fisherman.

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Don’t you think?

I haven’t read any Hemingway for quite a while. Perhaps it is time to dust something off. Needless to say, it is definitely time to toast old Ernesto.

And did you read this? I think ABInBev should sue!

6 Comments
May 5, 2015

Positing the paradox

by chuckofish

Today is Soren Kierkegaard’s birthday (May 5, 1813 – November 11, 1855). Old Soren has always been a favorite of mine.

Søren-Kirkegaard-Statue

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

–Journals, 1847

Kierkegaard is like Thoreau or Emerson in that people take quotes out of context and think he is great (and that they are great for thinking so).

2be34c4853048a5da41a2ea2df1a9861I have no doubt that he would hate that. Let’s try reading one of his books–the whole thing.

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“Then faith’s paradox is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual determines his relation to the universal through his relation to God, not his relation to God through his relation through the universal…Unless this is how it is, faith has no place in existence; and faith is then a temptation.”

Well, at the very least I will toast him tonight. Join me, won’t you?

P.S. Why is Kierkegaard not listed on the Episcopal calendar of saints? If it were up to me, he would be.

5 Comments
April 30, 2015

Into your hands

by chuckofish

martinluther

Here’s a morning prayer to get you going for the day:

I thank You, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, that You have kept me this night from all harm and danger; and I pray that You would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, that all my doings and life may please You. For into Your hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen.

–Martin Luther

How do you like that Playmobil Martin Luther? The OM gave him to me for my birthday!

Have a good Thursday.

5 Comments
April 28, 2015

Note to self

by chuckofish

Bryce Canyon, Utah

Bryce Canyon, Utah

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person. And it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.

–Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées

2 Comments
April 24, 2015

Kickin’ up dust

by chuckofish

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“I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.”

–Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

Have a good weekend. Try to find some time to be quiet and think. Turn off the computer. Take a break from social media.

Read some Buechner. Read this.

Watch A Thousand Clowns (1965): Remind yourself why you were “born a human being and not a chair.”

I plan to read some more old letters which I have unearthed in my ongoing basement reorganization/clean-up. Here’s a tidbit from a letter my mother wrote in 1979 when I was in graduate school and my dual personality was at Smith:

It’s around 5 o’clock and I wish you were here to share some sherry and nibblies with me and have a good chat. It’s times like this when I miss you the  most. I haven’t had any sherry since you left–it’s the sort of thing I have to have with someone in order to enjoy it.

Some things never change! (Although I have no problem drinking by myself!) Ah, a toast to mothers everywhere who miss their daughters!

4 Comments
April 9, 2015

Just saying

by chuckofish

alamo-john-wayne

“It was like I was empty. Well, I’m not empty anymore. That’s what’s important, to feel useful in this old world, to hit a lick against what’s wrong for what’s right even though you get walloped for saying that word. Now I may sound like a Bible beater yelling up a revival at a river crossing camp meeting, but that don’t change the truth none. There’s right and there’s wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one and you’re living. You do the other and you may be walking around, but you’re dead as a beaver hat.”

– Davy Crockett (John Wayne) in The Alamo (1960)

I have an event-packed calendar today, so I need a little John Wayne to get me started. That and a little Philippians 4:13.

Have a great day! Tomorrow’s Friday!

3 Comments
March 31, 2015

Tuesday’s message

by chuckofish

"St. Paul Preaching in Athens" by Raphael

“St. Paul Preaching in Athens” by Raphael

Wonderful words for Tuesday in Holy Week:

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

(1 Corinthians 1:18-31

The Bible speaks to us in the 21st century. Selah.

2 Comments
March 19, 2015

Preaching to ourselves

by chuckofish

fleurs

Then at last we see what hope is and where it comes from, hope as the driving power and outermost edge of faith. Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eyes on the future. There has never been a time past when God wasn’t with us as the strength beyond our strength, the wisdom beyond our wisdom, as whatever it is in our hearts–whether we believe in God or not–that keeps us human enough at least to get by despite everything in our lives that tends to wither the heart and make us less than human. To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift.

–Frederick Buechner (A Room Called Remember)

2 Comments