dual personalities

Tag: New Year

January 12, 2015

“I live my life a quarter mile at a time.”*

by chuckofish

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So here we are well into January and I haven’t written anything about the new year or January or anything like that. Tant pis. I haven’t been feeling it.

This weekend, however, I spent all day Saturday and a good part of Sunday putting away Christmas decorations and generally getting the house in order. I feel much better about Life and 2015 and all that.

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It is good to welcome back a few old friends who were put away for the holidays.

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Hello, Nigel and Errol, you handsome devils. (My mother named these guys many moons ago.)

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I hesitate to make any great claims for change in the new year. Change happens despite us, so I prefer to stay on course and hope for the best. The OM and I have pledged to clean up the storage area in the basement and Throw Away a lot of accumulated stuff. This seems like a worthy goal for the rest of the winter months.

Meanwhile I am back reading Middlemarch, which is really good!

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People haven’t changed so much since 1871. I recognize quite a few in this study of provincial life.

The OM and I have also enjoyed watching the Fast and the Furious movies he received for Christmas.

81uuHFiu2ZL._SY606_I mean who can resist these two cuties?

Vin Diesel and Paul Walker

Vin Diesel and Paul Walker

So onward, I say, in 2015.

Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always to thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

–BCP

*Dom in The Fast and The Furious (2001)

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January 1, 2014

Face to the front

by chuckofish

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.

–Henry Ward Beecher

AMEN!

Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887), you will recall, was quite a fellow.

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The son of the celebrated preacher Lyman Beecher and the brother of renowned author Harriet Beecher Stowe, he was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God’s love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His personal life was the thing that soap operas are made of and it is pretty amazing that no one has thought to make a movie about him. (But we do not want this guy to play him!)

He is cool enough, after all, to have a statue in Brooklyn.

Statue of Beecher in Brooklyn, NY

Statue of Beecher in Brooklyn, NY

I would like to go see the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn where he was the first pastor. (This would be a fun walking tour.)

57 Orange Street between Henry and Hicks Streets in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood

57 Orange Street between Henry and Hicks Streets in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood

According to the NHL, it was designed “to accommodate the large crowds that came to hear Beecher and his cohorts. Its simple design reflects the Puritan ethic of plain living and high thinking, and the walls that once rang to the sound of abolition oratory remain largely unchanged.”

Among those who came to hear Beecher were Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. In fact, so many flocked to hear his sermons that special “Beecher boats” were needed to ferry the throngs from Manhattan!

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Abraham Lincoln stained glass window by Frederick Stymetz Lamb

Abraham Lincoln stained glass window by Frederick Stymetz Lamb

“The stained glass windows of Plymouth Church are widely recognized as artistic treasures. The prominent artist Frederick Stymetz Lamb designed, and his brothers of the J. and R. Lamb Studios in Greenwich Village built the nineteen major windows of the Sanctuary, and installed between 1907 and 1909. As planned by then-minister Newell Dwight Hillis, they are unusual in depicting historical, not religious, subjects, taking as their theme the influence of Puritanism (the parent of Congregationalism) on the growth of liberty in the United States-personal liberty, religious liberty and political liberty.”

Well, it’s my kind of place. And as you know, this is how my mind works.

Happy New Year! Thanks for reading our blog in 2013! Keep reading in 2014!

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January 4, 2012

Back at work

by chuckofish

…with a new Snow & Graham calendar, thanks to daughter # 1.

Well, the Christmas Holidays can be very hectic indeed. First we put up all the decorations and then we take them down. We spend months picking out gifts, wrap them and then tear them open. We clean up. We go to the grocery store (a lot). The family gathers and then they disperse once again. Everyone is so busy! Daughter # 1 moved to NYC over the weekend. Daughter # 2 is in Chicago visiting a friend. And the boy moved into a grown-up apartment yesterday. Phew. It was almost a relief to go back to work for some quiet time!

And so, as I endeavor to regain my equilibrium, I offer this well-known quote from the wonderful Robert Louis Stevenson:

“The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.”

I plan to do some major league cleaning and sorting and arranging in all my empty rooms. Life’s plain, common work is before me! (And that’s a good thing.)

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January 3, 2012

2012: Let’s think positive

by chuckofish

“Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”
–Woody Allen

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January 2, 2012

A new year’s discipline

by chuckofish

Gratitude … goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
-Henri J. M. Nouwen

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