True that
by chuckofish
“I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like, than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought!”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters
dual personalities
Tag: quotes
March 6, 2014
And the wind shall say
by chuckofish
11th century stained glass Jesus
From “Choruses from the Rock” by T.S. Eliot
The Word of the LORD came unto me, saying:
O miserable cities of designing men,
O wretched generation of enlightened men,
Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities,
Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:
I have given you hands which you turn from worship,
I have given you speech, for endless palaver, I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,
I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.
I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.
Many are engaged in writing books and printing them,
Many desire to see their names in print,
Many read nothing but the race reports.
Much is your reading, but not the Word of GOD,
Much is your building, but not the House of GOD,
Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing,
To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?And the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.”
March 5, 2014
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.*
by chuckofish
“All the absurd little meetings, decisions, inner skirmishes that go to make up our days. It all adds up to very little, and yet it all adds up to very much. Our days are full of nonsense, and yet not, because it is precisely into the nonsense of our days that God speaks to us words of great significance – not words that are written in the stars but words that are written into the raw stuff and nonsense of our days, which are not nonsense just because God speaks into the midst of them. And the words that he says, to each of us differently, are “Be brave…be merciful…feed my lambs…press on toward the goal.”
-Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark
Lent begins today on Ash Wednesday. There is a traditional Ash Wednesday service going on somewhere near you. At our church, we have two services today, but neither time works for me. So I think I’ll go to a Noon service near work. If I do, then I will wipe my forehead off. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s pretentious Ash Wednesday worshippers.
No brownie points for the Veep.
When my children were younger and lived at home, I tried to make them aware of Lent. We watched our Lenten movies and discussed them. These efforts were a hit.
Once I put a lot of bible verses in a bowl on the dining room table. Each night one of the kids would pick one and read it. We would attempt to discuss it during dinner. My family was less comfortable with these efforts on my part. They seemed hokey I guess. I’m glad I tried. Perhaps something sunk in.
Once again I will endeavor to keep a “holy Lent”–not by denying myself things like chocolate or wine but by being more intentional about keeping the Great Commandment. You know, the one about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself.
Good luck to me, right?
*Psalm 51, verse ll
March 4, 2014
Grace to you and peace
by chuckofish
“Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.”
― Andrew Murray
(1828 – 1917) Murray was a South African writer, teacher, and Dutch Reformed minister.
Are you thinking about giving up something for Lent? Or taking something on? Are you eating pancakes tonight?
February 27, 2014
“All great and precious things are lonely.”*
by chuckofish
John Steinbeck, author, Nobel Prize winner and Episcopalian, was born on this day in 1902 in Salinas, California.
A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—
“Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.”
So tonight I will lift my glass of wine in a toast to the memory of the great Steinbeck! Why don’t you join me?
*East of Eden
February 25, 2014
We could open up this suitcase full of sparks
by chuckofish
I used to be “with it”. But they changed what “it” was. Now what I’m with isn’t “it” and what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me.”
–Grampa Simpson, From “Homerpalooza” (Season 7, Episode 24)
Sadly, I can relate to Grampa Simpson. Can you? I guess this is an inevitable part of aging. Not that I was ever too “with it” to begin with…but a lot of modern pop culture seems “weird and scary” to me. Hello, Kim Kardashian. And The Batchelor. I don’t get that either.
However, as readers of this blog know, I have a soft spot in my heart for Eminem. I try to keep an open mind. Occasionally I even go to a concert.
Such was the case last Sunday night when I ventured downtown to the Sheldon Concert Hall to see Josh Ritter.
Mostly I bought the tickets to see his opening act Gregory Alan Isakov. My Old Man bailed on me at the last minute (he had a headache) and so the boy stepped up and went with me. He was a good concert date.
It was a sold out concert. Unfortunately, a lot of the audience arrived during Gregory Alan Isakov’s performance which was annoying. And rude. And the poor guy’s band was not with him. They had to leave in Chicago, he explained, and so he was on his own for the rest of the tour. It had been “super fun and scary” since then.
I kind of love him for saying “super fun”.
Gregory epitomizes the introverted artist who must perform. And to stand up there without his band–zut alors! But I thought he was wonderful, performing his set of seven songs from numerous albums with humor and spirit.
Before his last song, he said, “I’ll leave you with a sad one, because that’s how I roll.”
Is he my kind of guy or what!
On the flip side was Josh Ritter who bounded onto the stage full of self-confidence and raring to go.
He put on quite a show, which I enjoyed very much. His fans, who filled the theater, were enthusiastic. Two middle-aged women to our left were down-right embarrassing–swaying and giggling like teenagers. (They also made several trips to the bar, which probably explains a lot of their behavior.) Please shoot me if I ever behave like this.
We opted to leave before the encores in order to avoid the parking lot mayhem and because it was a school night after all. But I was glad I had nudged myself out of my routine.
(My thanks to the boy who took these photos on his iPhone.)
February 21, 2014
“You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection.”*
by chuckofish
The liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) remembers Eric Liddell with a feast day on February 22. Isn’t that nice?
You remember Eric Liddell. He was the Scottish athlete and devout Christian, who refused to run in a heat held on Sunday at the 1924 Olympics in Paris and was forced to withdraw from the 100-metres race, his best event. However, he won the 400 metres. They made a movie about him and Harold Abrahams called Chariots of Fire in 1981. Remarkably it won the Best Picture Oscar. (I blogged about it here.) It is one of my favorite movies.
Anyway, I was unaware that we Episcopalians recognize this worthy missionary on our calendar. I can’t say I approve of all the “saints” so celebrated, but I approve of him.
God whose strength bears us up as on mighty wings: We rejoice in remembering your athlete and missionary, Eric Liddell, to whom you gave courage and resolution in contest and in captivity; and we pray that we also may run with endurance the race set before us and persevere in patient witness, until we wear that crown of victory won for us by Jesus our Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
–Collect for the day
* Chariots of Fire (1981); screenplay by Colin Welland
February 19, 2014
Food for thought: fear not
by chuckofish
St. George window in the Princeton United Methodist Church by Tiffany Studio of New York City
“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Alexander fighting dragons, Le livre et la vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre, Paris, c. 1420–25
Kunisada dragon
Arthur Rackham
‘St. George and the Dragon’, by Wassily Kandinsky, 1911
‘The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun’, by William Blake
The Reluctant Dragon by Maxfield Parrish
February 18, 2014
“To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin”
by chuckofish
On this day in 1885 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in the United States. What a book! It is still controversial, lo, these many years later.
An illustration by Thomas Hart Benton
We will not go into all that today. I will let ol’ Huck speak for himself in this, one of the greatest scenes in literature:
“It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie–I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter–and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.
HUCK FINN.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking–thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll GO to hell”–and tore it up.”
–Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
February 17, 2014
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word*
by chuckofish
How was your weekend? Did you have a nice Valentine’s Day?
I asked my valentine for a new shower head and my husband went out and bought one for me. I was pleased. He had to buy a special wrench as well (par for the course) but he installed it with a minimum of cursing.
Later in the weekend I found a box with old cards in it. Some were Valentines. This one from the Green Tiger Press
was sent to my one-year-old daughter #1 by her aunt, my dual personality, who was a first year doctoral student living in a dorm at Yale at the time. She wrote a long note inside. Here is a wee bit of that note:
Well, sweetie-poops, I have to make this short because I need to mail it and then take a nap. My neighbors kept me awake last night with their talking and I had to get up really early to do my Hittite and Akkadian, so I am tired. Otherwise, I’m doing okay and working hard and eating right and learning French and thinking about you all the time!
Isn’t that a riot? It was fun to go through all the cards and read what my friends wrote back in the day when our children were tiny and we were young and lighthearted.
I saw Inside Llewyn Davis. I really liked it. I thought Oscar Isaac was excellent. I had been listening to the soundtrack all week and so I was well prepared for the music to be great. But the film is more than just the music. And I liked the marmalade cat a lot. It made me want another Cat. But I am allergic, so that won’t happen. Sigh. Of course, the movie wasn’t nominated for Best Picture and Oscar got no Oscar nod. Typical.
I went to a couple of estate sales, but didn’t get anything except a few odd books.
I have been reading Missouri Bittersweet by MacKinlay Kantor and it is wonderful. I had no idea Kantor, whom I have always admired as a novelist, was such a fan of my flyover state. He and his wife revisited many small towns and counties in order to write this book and there is a lot of interesting stuff about the fascinating people who have lived in this state, such as Jesse James, Mark Twain and Daniel Boone, and also the regular people who still do. It was published in 1969.
I was the Intercessor at church Sunday morning. In the Prayers of the People we always pray for the diocese of Lui in the Sudan and some of those African names can be a challenging mouthful, but I managed to stumble over “Albert”. Sometimes my brain just freezes. But afterwards the associate rector complimented me on my reading of the names on the prayer request list. I gather I kept the pace up nicely. Well, compliments are always appreciated.
And the amaryllis finally bloomed!
It seemed like it took forever and they still haven’t quite burst forth completely. Our patience has been tested! They are indeed a welcome sight in the midst of our arctic winter–as are all our green friends which I move around the house to sunny spots.
A sunny window at home
Have a good week!
* from “A Glimpse” by Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)
dual personalities 