dual personalities

Tag: quotes

I pray

by chuckofish

Yesterday I was back at work full swing and it was one of those days that really tests the soul. Not that anything bad happened or that people were mean or anything like that. It was just non-stop dealing with stuff.

I thought of this quote by C.S. Lewis:

“I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It does not change God. It changes me.”

"Toward Toas" by Eric Sloan

“Toward Taos” by Eric Sloane

Know what I mean?

“Tomorrow, is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one.”*

by chuckofish

What a way to start the new year! According to our local weather guru Dave Murray, The Great Flood of 2015 is a very big deal.

12474082_10153853660754228_8933423617582052725_o

Photo from FOX2 Facebook page

“During this event it has forced the closure of Interstate 70 in two locations, Interstate 44 in three locations, and Interstate 55 (at times overnight). This did not occur in the Great Flood of ’93, nor the December Flood of ’82…This flooding event is nothing less than historic and will serve as the new bench mark, the historic reference, for the Meramec River Basin, including the Bourbeuse.”

We who are high and dry take it all rather lightly, but I talked to a delivery guy at work who lives in House Springs who said he can’t even get home. That’s intense.

I am grateful that I can get home and that it is warm and dry there. All I have to do this weekend is take down my Christmas tree and box up all the decorations. This is not a small task, but it is not sand-bagging.

So a toast to and a prayer for all those who are fighting the flood and also for those newspeople who are in the field and in the studio reporting on the flood.

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”

–Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910

 

*Brad Paisley

The party’s over

by chuckofish

snoopyFullSizeRender

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Pleased as man with us to dwell

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2015-12-24 at 2.06.48 PM

“The nativity mystery “conceived from the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary,” means, that God became human, truly human out of his own grace. The miracle of the existence of Jesus, his “climbing down of God” is: Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary! Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.”

–Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

Merry Christmas!

“Hey, unto you a child is born!”*

by chuckofish

wyeth

But as far as I’m concerned, Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman – sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to clobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby. And the Wise Men are always going to be Leroy and his brothers, bearing ham. When we came out of the church that night it was cold and clear, with crunchy snow underfoot and bright, bright stars overhead. And I thought about the Angel of the Lord – Gladys, with her skinny legs and her dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling at all of us everywhere: ‘Hey! Unto you a child is born!’

Happy Christmas Eve. We are going to the early service this afternoon which includes the Pageant. It always reminds me of the book by Barbara Robinson and takes me back to my own Christmas Pageant experiences at school. How well I remember going to the Inn to ask for a room and my friend Trudy Glick turning me away. We had a moment where we nearly burst into nervous laughter, but we didn’t.  I sang a tremulous solo to my wife Mary. The Angel of the Lord fainted…or was that a Wise Man?

Keep the faith!

*Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever; the painting is by N.C. Wyeth.

Flyover good times

by chuckofish

“He saw clearly how plain and simple – how narrow, even – it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.” (Kenneth Graham, The Wind in the Willows)

IMG_1530

IMG_1534

IMG_1539

IMG_1536

IMG_1543

IMG_1547

IMG_1542

Hope you are enjoying your countdown to Christmas! Try to slow it down and enjoy the simple things.

“A flock of blessings light upon thy back.”*

by chuckofish

39b8c4d1224b2937415d90c1ca12c397

Today is the birthday of my dear dual personality! I wish her peace on earth, good health and tickets to the Star Wars movie!

Ha ha.

They say the movie is worth seeing, but I say ho hum.

tumblr_noo5mrd03u1qdril3o1_500

I can wait. A long time.

Anyway, to get back to my sister’s birthday, we are having a little party tonight for some of daughter #2’s friends who are in town for a wedding. But I will be thinking of my dual personality and wishing she were here laughing it up with me.

card reading

Dual personalities festively attired in red and green circa 1983

I’ll be toasting her and sending my love.

mary and santa

In other news: daughter #1 arrives on Saturday! Hope she bundles up for the trip home!

*Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Xmas all grown ups sa is the season for the kiddies but this do not prevent them from taking a tot or 2 from the bot and having, it may seme, a better time than us.”*

by chuckofish

Let us pause mid-week and take a deep breath.

"Lady at the tea table" by Mary Cassatt

“Lady at the tea table” by Mary Cassatt

Yes, it is less than ten days until Christmas, but all will be well.

All will be wonderful.

Maybe not perfect…but perfection, I think, is highly overrated.

(c) Northampton Museums & Art Gallery; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Juriaen van Streeck, Northampton Museums & Art Gallery

Make yourself a cup of tea (or coffee) and take a few minutes to sit by the window and think.

DA1609-650x650

“Woman Sitting by the Window” by Pablo Picasso

Think about those Christmases of long ago.

“Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: “It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.”**

Feel better now? This is how my brain works.

Have a great Wednesday. Daughter #2 is flying in from the east coast today. Tra la, tra la.

*From How to Be Topp by Geoffrey Willans

**From A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

“The world was hers for the reading.”*

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Betty Smith (December 15, 1896 – January 17, 1972), who wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a classic about a sensitive young girl who escapes the grim realities of her tenement life through reading.

119626

I always thought the author was Irish-American, but she was born Elisabeth Wehner, the daughter of German immigrants. I guess I am thinking of the movie based on her famous book–the characters are all so Irish. It is a good movie and Peggy Ann Garner as Francie Nolan is quite affecting. James Dunn won an Academy Award for best supporting actor as Francie’s pathetic drunk of a father (whom she loves very much nevertheless.) He deserved the award, although I always had the feeling he was playing himself.

KEHR-SUB-popup

The characters are very real and the movie does not gloss over the hard realities of the book. This is probably due to the fact that the film is directed by the great Elia Kazan–in his directorial debut.

Anyway, a good book, a good movie–hat’s off and happy birthday to Betty Smith!

“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains – a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”

I should also mention that yesterday was the birthday of one of my most favorite writers, Shirley Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965). I will happily toast both ladies. How about you?

*A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Reason is indignant

by chuckofish

5e2d14c5f26a70565f212ba1c2447459

“God travels wonderful ways with human beings, but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people. God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather, his way is beyond all comprehension, free and self-determined beyond all proof. Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be. There he confounds the reason of the reasonable; there he aggravates our nature, our piety—that is where he wants to be, and no one can keep him from it. Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.”

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas