Quotes | dual personalities

November 14, 2018

“Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration.”*

by chuckofish

The Christmas cactus is on the verge of blooming–right on schedule.

I am pretty impressed, considering the abuse it has taken from the wee babes, who are fascinated by it.

We had a little snow, which came before most people had an opportunity to rake/vacuum up the leaves that have fallen. So there is kind of a mess out there. As you can see, there are still a lot of leaves on the trees. C’est la vie.

Every year is different, and that’s what makes living in flyover country interesting.

Yesterday, after a busy day at work, I raced over to Umrath Lounge at my flyover university to find a seat to hear Marilynne Robinson speak. I found a single seat in the second row and sat right behind her. I could have reached out and touched her, but I restrained myself. A member of the English department made an incoherent and self-serving introduction and then Marilynne read her essay on “Holy Moses: An appreciation of Genesis and Exodus as literature and theology” in dim light which frequently caused her to stumble over her words. It was an academic talk and I am no scholar and she is way over my head anyway, but I enjoyed listening to her. In the Q&A section at the end we got a chance to see Marilynne the person and not the scholar and that was good.

Well, I am thankful that I have a job where I am in a position to come in contact with one of my heroes from time to time. To be in the same room with Marilynne Robinson was really something–a Christian in that den of academia, quoting 17th century puritans unironically!

“The Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

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November 13, 2018

“Enlarge these hearts of ours”

by chuckofish

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[This Arthur Rackham illustration is perfect for our flyover weather recently–just add snow!]

Today Episcopalians remember Charles Simeon with a Lesser Feast. Simeon was a leader among English evangelical churchmen and was one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society in 1799. According to the historian Thomas Macaulay, Simeon’s “authority and influence… extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England … his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.”

Blessed Lord, the only living and true God,
the Creator and Preserver of all things,
We live by you;
and our whole dependence is upon you,
for all the good that we either have or hope for.
We now desire to bless your name for those mercies,
which in so large a measure
you have generously given us.

Worthy are you, O Lord our God,
to receive all honor and glory,
all thanks and praise,
and love and obedience,
as in the courts of heaven,
so in all the assemblies of your servants upon earth;
for you are great, and you do wondrous things;
you are God alone.

You have looked favorably on your land,
and you have dealt graciously with us.
Instead of giving us over to all the calamities that we feared,
you have multiplied your mercies towards us,
for which we are now called to solemnize a day of thanksgiving.

How sweet and wonderful is it
to recount all the instances of your patience with us, and your blessings to us!

O what shall we render to the Lord for all his benefits!
O let not our hearts be stingy towards you,
whose hand has been so open and generous unto us.
But do enlarge these hearts of ours,
and fill them with more love and thankfulness to the gracious Giver of all our good things.

– Charles Simeon, 1850

It is good (and necessary) to take time to thank God for our blessings.

What are you thankful for?

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November 8, 2018

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”*

by chuckofish

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Koichi Okumura (1888-1976)

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

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We still have most of our leaves on the trees here in flyover country, but winter is coming…

That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past. (Ecclesiastes 3:15)

The last five paintings are by Andrew Wyeth.

P.S. I watched Nevada Smith (1966) last night. “I’ve got a rifle, a horse and eight dollars. It’ll hold.”

*Ecclesiastes 3:1

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October 31, 2018

Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott*

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2018-10-30 at 1.24.29 PM.png October 31, 1517 was the day Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg.

Screen Shot 2018-10-30 at 2.14.26 PM.png Did you know that Luther’s theses are engraved into the door of All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg? The Latin inscription above informs the reader that the original door was destroyed by a fire, and that in 1857, King Frederick William IV of Prussia ordered a replacement be made.

Today is also the anniversary of our pater’s death in 1992. One of his former students gave me a picture of him and I have it in my office. He watches over me with a slightly annoyed look on his face.

I forgave him for his many imperfections a long time ago and I don’t mind him hanging around in my office.

“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

So join me in a toast tonight to Martin Luther and to ANC III.

And if you’re going to a Great Pumpkin party, make good choices!

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*Martin Luther

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October 11, 2018

Words of wisdom

by chuckofish

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“Our inability to see things that are right before our eyes, until they are pointed out to us, would be amusing if it were not at times so serious. We are coming, I think, to depend too much on being told and shown and taught, instead of using our own eyes and brains and inventive faculties, which are likely to be just as good as any other person’s.”

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

[The photo of Monument Valley is from Pinterest; the quote was found on the Hay Quaker blog.]

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October 10, 2018

A chip off the old block

by chuckofish

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Thought for the day: “At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Pictured above: the wee laddie (left)/the boy at approximately the same age circa 1988 (right).

I mean really.

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Of course, he is working hard on scarring up his precious new face. Par for the course.

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September 20, 2018

“Those who wish to sing always find a song.”*

by chuckofish

Names of Horses

All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding

and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul

sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,

for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,

dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.

All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine

clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;

and after noon’s heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,

gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,

and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,

three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.

Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load

a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.

Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill

of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,

one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,

led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,

and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,

and lay the shotgun’s muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,

and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,

shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,

where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.

For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses,

roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,

yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter

frost heaved your bones in the ground – old toilers, soil makers:

O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.

–Donald Hall from Kicking the Leaves (1978)

Today we toast the poet Donald Hall (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) whose birthday it is. I missed the fact that he died earlier this year.

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Hall published more than fifty books, from poetry and drama to biography and memoirs, and edited numerous anthologies, including New Poets of England and America (1957; coedited with Robert Pack and Louis Simpson). He went to Exeter, Harvard and Oxford, had a successful career as an academic and editor, then happily went to live on his ancestral farm in New Hampshire and devoted himself to poetry.

I remember this book from my children’s childhood.

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In other news, the wee babes dropped by my office yesterday and ran up and down the long hallways.

They are both recovering from ear infections, so they didn’t stay long, but it was sure fun to see them and their daddy who brought them.

It is still pretty hot here in flyover country. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for fall. Enough already.

*Plato

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September 19, 2018

A-tisket, A-tasket

by chuckofish

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We just celebrated our 7th anniversary writing this blog. Isn’t that something?

If you read our blog regularly (or even semi-regularly) and enjoy it, please click on “comment” below and then hit the “Like” button today. Our readers are very dear to us and we’d like to know you’re out there!

“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

― Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes

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August 31, 2018

“Don’t point that finger at me unless you intend to use it.”*

by chuckofish

Woohoo, three-day weekend coming up!

I have no Big Plans but daughter #1 will be driving in from mid-MO.

We’ll barbecue, because…

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Maybe we’ll have a dance party…hopefully with the wee babes!

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No doubt we’ll watch a movie…

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Maybe we should watch a Neil Simon movie and toast him since he died this week at 91. The Odd Couple (1968) is always a solid choice and funnier than you remember.

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I can’t take it anymore, Felix, I’m cracking up. Everything you do irritates me. And when you’re not here, the things I know you’re gonna do when you come in irritate me. You leave me little notes on my pillow. Told you 158 times I can’t stand little notes on my pillow. “We’re all out of cornflakes. F.U.” Took me three hours to figure out F.U. was Felix Ungar!

Murder By Death (1976) is also quite funny–a satire of all those Agatha Christie-type mysteries featuring all the famous detectives you can think of. As I recall, David Niven and Maggie Smith steal the show as “Dick and Dora Charleston”.

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We can all relate to Truman Capote’s character, Lionel Twain, when he says:

You’ve tricked and fooled your readers for years. You’ve tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You’ve introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You’ve withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now, the tables are turned. Millions of angry mystery readers are now getting their revenge. When the world learns I’ve outsmarted you, they’ll be selling your $1.95 books for twelve cents.

[Here’s an interesting article about Neil Simon and his influence on American society.]

Well, whatever you choose to do this long weekend, I hope you have a good one! Take a real break from your work and remember:

When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but also of the world. Then we become what the world makes us. We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says thanks. We are likable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. And the more we allow our accomplishments — the results of our actions — to become the criteria of our self-esteem, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes. In many people’s lives, there is a nearly diabolic chain in which their anxieties grow according to their successes. This dark power has driven many of the greatest artists into self-destruction.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

*Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple

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August 27, 2018

“There’s so much to be grateful for, words are poor things.”*

by chuckofish

Monday again and daughter #2 and DN are heading home to Maryland. The long weekend rushed by as usual.

We had fun toasting our smart cookie with friends and family.

We also had fun visiting her wonderful wedding venue…

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and there was a whole lot of good instagramming going on…

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A good time was had by all (to say the least)! Everyone was home together. What could be better?

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who settest the solitary in families: We commend to thy continual care the homes in which thy people dwell. Put far from them, we beseech thee, every root of bitterness, the desire of vainglory, and the pride of life. Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness. Knit together in constant affection those who, in holy wedlock, have been made one flesh. Turn the hearts of the parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to the parents; and so enkindle fervent charity among us all, that we may evermore be kindly affectioned one to another; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP)

*Marilynne Robinson, Home

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