A chance to fly

It came just the same

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons.
It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”

The House of Christmas

Merry Christmas!

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.


--G. K. Chesterton

Journey of the Magi

Now the battle lines are drawn

Life is, in fact, a battle. On this point optimists and pessimists agree. Evil is insolent and strong: beauty enchanting but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in very great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally, unhappy. But the world as it stands is no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night; we wake up to it again and again for ever and ever; we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. We can welcome experience as it comes, and give it what it demands, in exchange for something which is idle to pause to call much or little so long as it contributes to swell the volume of consciousness. In this there is mingled pain and delight, but over the mysterious mixture there hovers a visible rule, that bids us learn to will and seek to understand. Henry James

On Human Work

THROUGH WORK man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family. And work means any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of humanity itself. Man is made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God himself, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth. From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature.

John Paul the Great

The X factor

“ I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." --Isaac Newton

That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Ordinary Lives

There are names from every era that are blazoned across the pages of history. But emperors and kings are not the people for whom the world was created, nor are they the forces which turn the world.

I recently watched the first season of Doctor Who (the subsequent seasons got put off by school, but they will be watched). One of my favorite things about it (and there were many) is that the characters it focuses on aren't world famous doctors, lawyers, investigators, or the president. They are normal everyday people living normal, unglamorous lives--working at a department store, going grocery shopping, fighting, and loving.

This is evident in the Doctor's fascination with humans, with earth. But no where is it clearer (at least in the one season I have seen) than in the episode Father's day. When, on a trip back in time, Rose saves the life of her father the fabric of the world ruptures and the earth comes close to ending. As the Doctor explains this is precisely because of the power of ordinary lives;

"Rose, there's a man alive in the world who wasn't alive before. An ordinary man. That's the most important thing in creation. The whole world's different because he's alive."

The Doctor emphasizes this at other points through out episode. He tells one couple who says they would appreciate it if he saved them even though they were not important, "Who said you’re not important? I’ve traveled to all sorts of places, done things you couldn’t even imagine, but... you two. Street corner, two in the morning, gettin’ a taxi home. I’ve never had a life like that." It is normal people, living everyday lives who he is trying to save, it is they that are important.

To be or to be just, that is the question

“No man worth anything ought to spend his time weighing the prospects of life and death, but should consider only one thing in performing any action—that is, whether it is just or unjust.” --Socrates, Plato's Apology

Dreams

A Writer's Place

This is a speech given by William Faulkner accepting a Nobel Prize in Literature. It gives very nice description of the role of a writer should play in society:

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The Human Condition

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition."--Graham Greene

Thanksgiving

Today is a day dominated for many Americans by food and family--two excellent things to be grateful for. However, in the repetition and stress and tryptophan the actual meaning of the day often gets a little lost. So here are a few thoughts from Chesterton on gratitude:

"Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace."

"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera,

and grace before the play and pantomime,

and grace before I open a book,

and grace before sketching,

painting,

swimming,

fencing,

boxing,

walking,

playing,

dancing

and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

"Aren't those sparks splendid?" I said.
"Yes," he replied.
'That is all that I ask you to admit," said I. "Give me those few red specks and I will deduce Christian morality. Once I thought like you, that one's pleasure in a flying spark was a thing that could come and go with that spark. Once I thought that the delight was as free as the fire. Once I thought that red star we see was alone in space. But now I know that the red star is only on the apex of an invisible pyramid of virtues. That red fire is only the flower on a stalk of living habits, which you cannot see. Only because your mother made you say 'Thank you' for a bun are you now able to thank Nature or chaos for those red stars of an instant or for the white stars of all time. Only because you were humble before fireworks on the fifth of November do you now enjoy any fireworks that you chance to see. You only like them being red because you were told about the blood of the martyrs; you only like them being bright because brightness is a glory. That flame flowered out of virtues, and it will fade with virtues. Seduce a woman, and that spark will be less bright. Shed blood, and that spark will be less red. Be really bad, and they will be to you like the spots on a wallpaper."

Portrait of an Artist

Over the Weekend the Pope addressed artists gathered at the Vatican. The entire thing is beautiful meditiation on art and its importance in the world and I encourage you to read it. This bit, which contemplates the importance of art and beauty in the world and the tellos of art--a topic which is relevant for everyone not just artists, in particular stood out to me:

Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy "shock", it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum – it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it "reawakens" him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft. Dostoevsky’s words that I am about to quote are bold and paradoxical, but they invite reflection. He says this: "Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here." The painter Georges Braque echoes this sentiment: "Art is meant to disturb, science reassures." Beauty pulls us up short, but in so doing it reminds us of our final destiny, it sets us back on our path, fills us with new hope, gives us the courage to live to the full the unique gift of life. The quest for beauty that I am describing here is clearly not about escaping into the irrational or into mere aestheticism.

Too often, though, the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker dazed; instead of bringing him out of himself and opening him up to horizons of true freedom as it draws him aloft, it imprisons him within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy. It is a seductive but hypocritical beauty that rekindles desire, the will to power, to possess, and to dominate others, it is a beauty which soon turns into its opposite, taking on the guise of indecency, transgression or gratuitous provocation. Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond. If we acknowledge that beauty touches us intimately, that it wounds us, that it opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing, of being able to grasp the profound meaning of our existence, the Mystery of which we are part; from this Mystery we can draw fullness, happiness, the passion to engage with it every day.

An Awfully Big Adventure

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.” - Helen Keller

The Rhyme of the Restless Ones

We couldn’t sit and study for the law;
The stagnation of a bank we couldn’t stand;
For our riot blood was surging,
And we didn’t need much urging
To excitements and excesses that are banned.
So we took to wine and drink and other things,
And the devil in us struggled to be free;
Til our friends rose up in wrath,
And they pointed out the path,
And they paid our debts and packed us o’er the sea.

Oh, they shook us off and shipped us o’er the foam,
To the larger lands that lure a man to roam;
And we took the chance they gave,
Of a far and foreign grave,
And we bade good-bye forevermore to home.

And some of us are climbing on the peak,
And some of us are camping on the plain,
By pine and palm you’ll find us,
With never claim to bind us,
By track and trail you’ll meet us once again.

We are fated serfs to freedom – sky and sea;
We have failed where slummy cities overflow;
But the stranger ways of Earth
Know our pride and worth,
And we go into the dark as fighters go.

Yes, we go into the night as brave men go,
Though our faces they be often streaked with woe;
Yet we’re hard as cats to kill,
And our hearts are reckless still,
And we’ve danced with death a dozen times or so.

And you’ll find us in Alaska after gold,
And you’ll find us herding cattle in the south.
We like strong drink and fun,
And, when the race is run,
We often die with curses in our mouth.
We are wild as colts unbroken, but never mean.
Of our sins we’ve shoulders broad to bear the blame;
But we’ll never stay in town
And we’ll never settle down,
And we’ll never have an object or an aim.

No, there’s that in us that time can never tame;
And life will always seem a careless game;
And they’d better far forget –
Those who say they love us yet –
Forget, blot out with bitterness our name.--Robert W. Service

Know the pain, Appreciate it

I keep feeling that I'm missing something. That there's some part of me that's not there yet. I've never tasted desperate. I've never had to deal with with the dirt and the grime. I've grown up with comfort and security and love. I haven't had to fight with the fear and the pain and the hardness of people's hearts. Yet, I feel that I should, that there's something to gain from having to go through this, that in some way it will help to shape me into the person whom I want to be.

There's a part of me that wonders why I haven't had to cope with this type of life. Why have I been blessed so? Is it simply arrogance on my part that I feel is if I could thrive if I was in that type of environment? Despite this, I feel as if I know or rather that I could know. It's not that I feel that I can relate to people who have had to go through this, it's, more so, that I feel that I do relate to them, that I have some kind of connection with them.

I have often attempted to put words to the reason why I have this design etched permanently in ink on me. It's as though I know that it is right, but I can't quite voice why. I can't quite make someone understand why I care for tattoos in general and why I care a great deal about my own. The reason is not solely because of it's mere look. That is part of it, but the greater part is, most certainly, what it says and the fact that it is shared. Furthermore it was him that asked to get them together and that never ceases to please me. There's something about tattoos in that they are forever, or at least they should be forever. They seem to say that no matter what happens, this will still be who I am, this will always be what I hold dear and what I believe and nothing can change that. Even if I am forced down in this world, I shall not be broken.

These two seemingly separate ideas, that of tasting desperate and tattoos, somehow coincide in my mind. I am having difficulty phrasing this, but there is some truth in that having a tattoo further enables me to understand. People, often time, look down on those who are covered with these permanent markings. Yet, this should not be.

Ora et Labora

Work, which makes a man free, and thought, which makes him worthy of freedom. --Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.

I know that I have written recently about the idea of change but it is a question that haunts me. There is so much in the world that needs doing and so much apathy solving nothing. I know that it is a terrible trap to think that the world can be "fixed," that someone can can install or strong arm the world into peace, prosperity and happiness. And yet I am nearing my twentieth year of schooling and working towards a PhD in the humanities and would I be more effective working in a soup kitchen or an inner city school, or trying to change policy? I received a pretty clear sign, basically was shouted at, that I am where I am suppose to be. Yet long hours in the library leave me asking existential questions about my purpose in the world.

A few weeks ago in my first year colloquium we had a speaker (one of the professors) taking about the relationship between politics and literature. His point was that politics need not be something forced nor need they be at the forefront of our every thought and action. "We embody what our politics are." In a way the very act of being a scholar is a political act. It has been repeated so many times that it has begun to sound trite, but there is some truth in the statement that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. The world has revolved, changed, and convulsed because of the ideas of people whose only claim in life is that they are scholars. The incipient power of ideas is just more subtle and hard to trace than the crack of a gun or even the power of a hot meal. But it is there.

And if our only goal is to take care of the material needs of the world, to make sure everyone is feed and sheltered we are only providing for part of what humanity needs. Not only is thought the only safeguard against abuses of power when attempting to achieve these ends but in addition to basic needs humans yearn for truth. Truth is the end for which we were made and the intellectual life if the pursuit of this Truth.

It can be too easy to forget this when engaged in the too solitary pursuit of knowledge, to get locked in a cyclical and sterile dialogue within the discipline that can never reach the outside world. So I leave you with final words of the aforementioned professor to our class-- in everything "The world should be too much with us--live with some discomfiture in the world."

And I'm Free

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
--Mark Twain

is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished

I recognize that I am a day late with this, but yesterday I did not have a spare moment to get down my thoughts on the day. I apologize for the delay.

My Guy Fawkes Day, as is my custom, culminated in a viewing of V for Vendetta. I know I mentioned the movie in last year's post for the day, but on this viewing something very different struck me. While there is plenty of violence in the film (as is to be expected I guess, in a movie by the Wachowski Brothers based off an Alan More comic book), V never recommends violence as a widespread social panacea and in fact never recommends that anyone beside himself, whom he seems outside of the system and as not full part of the world, use violence. For your reflection here is part of his television address to London, I realize it is a little long, but it is fascinating:

Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.

V makes two points here; first, injustice demands action or we are complicit with it. But his other point which underlies the first one is that, we cannot recognize justice, we cannot stand up for truth without deep contemplation. The authors here have spoken repeatedly about the power of words but it is a point worth repeating--we must be constantly intellectually engaged with the world. In 1984 one of the government's primary tactics in controlling the populace is redefining words--a practice which goes on both intentionally and unintentionally in our world. As Alan More says, "…Text-messaging or The Sun, these are perfect Orwellian ways of limiting the vocabulary and thus limiting the consciousness…" The real revolution is not V blowing up a building. That, as he says, is a symbol. The real revolution, what V is in fact urging the people of London to do and what hopefully follows the action of the film, is the people once again begin to think, to question, to challenge and thus to rediscover the Truth.

Stand Up and Fight and I'll Stand up with you

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
--John Stuart Mill

Let there be light

it had to come

Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world. --Archimedes

For a dreamer night's the only time of day

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. Ralph Waldo Emerson

What do you do when there's not anything to say anymore? When this floating, this limbo like state has permeated the inside and taken over. I don't feel full but empty. I can still think, still write, but I can only seem to respond to questions posed by others. Those questions don't enter my head like they used to. It's been months now, months of floating and there's still no explanation. First I thought it was that I was burned out, but I had made it to the end so it wasn't a major difficulty. But no healing seems to have occurred and so I'm again left without an explanation of this emptiness. It's just existing, it's just waiting, for what I just don't know. These are the thoughts, when they come, these are the struggles and the musings, when they still deem fit to come upon me. Or maybe its when I can open myself up to them, when I stop and listen, stop at all. Maybe I am living in a bubble, living in my head. I can't get out and I can't feel alive. It's only waiting and wanting and not even knowing what. I do the work and I can see I'm learning, but does it matter if its like this? Its not like last year, its manageable this time, it's not even unpleasant usually, but it still seems incorrect or lacking. It's not stimulating or invigorating or alive. It's information, absorption and processing. I can take it all in and I can use it and I can feel myself get smarter. But I'm still looking for the why. Knowledge for its own sake. I agree and I do want that. But I need something else as well. I need to breathe, to see, to feel. I need to stop, to reflect. I'm having a hard time finding the point of this arrangement we call life. Not in a depressed way, no worries of that because in the modern world that seems to be the immediate thought. It's not depression. It's more like boredom, which is fascinating because I'm interested in what I'm doing. It must be, again, the process. The mechanism that has taken over society and now dictates the way ones life proceeds and the proper way for one to acquire knowledge. Even when inside this very system, when I can see myself benefitting, even often enjoying it, I grow weary. But it doesn't even seem that I am growing that way anymore, it just seems to be a constant state, and so sometimes I just drift inside of it without realizing or worrying.

I want to break free

Or does it?

Shadows of the Past

It has been one year since this blog began, one year since we began this experiment in interaction. Since then things have changed. We are different people, shaped by the irrevocable flow of time. That difference has seeped through into our blogs, our topics, our voice, our presence has changed. My goals now for this endeavor are humbler--while this will always be a way for the three of us separated by time and space and life to keep in touch, to keep the bigger questions which do not always fit into the too infrequent catch-up phone calls in focus, no longer do I see it as a forum where what we shout to each other will affect the intervening distances. Sometime I do not even think that I am having a conversation with you let alone a dialogue with the world beyond. This experiment has been proof that the interweb is too impersonal, too big, too cold, too technological for a real debate. That is not why people turn to the on-line world--it is largely for escapism, for voyeurism, for socially acceptable stalking, for a chance to scream their opinions into the void, and often for a dose of schadenfreude. A genuine dialogue, developing in the void between strangers for no other purpose than to share each others thoughts has eluded us, and may be impossible in this medium.

While this experiment has failed I am not now tempted to take down this blog as I once was. For I have found a new purpose in it--a repository. It is a place where I can fix my thoughts, both in a effort to sort them out and as a record for me as to what issues I was concerned with and what I thought in the past, a diary or letter opened to our little public. It is a place for me to put poems, pictures and mostly quotes that inspire and amuse me. And through this sharing a new dialogue might occur, one less structured and less deliberate than the previous goal, but one occurring through the creation of a shared consciousness. By creating such a trove we at least create a common store of idea, of language and reference from which the dialogue can stem.

So two our 2 readers and anyone else out there who stumbles upon us, I have a favor to ask for our one year anniversary. Please, talk, think, point out something else that relates to what we are saying--respond in someway so we are not just shouting into the void.

The full text with no horror tunnel

We are the music makers, And we are the dreamer of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; ' World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy

In My Craft and Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Fables and Folklore

“ Gratitude is the sign of noble souls."-- Aesop

To Be

Spidey wasn't all that original

“ For of those to whom much is given, much is required."-- Luke 12:48

We don't have a plan...

You can't have plans. You can't have that image of the future which is all you see. If you do that then you lose your reason and every action you take is solely to achieve that image. Often time that image is pure and beautiful but in all likely hood it will lead you astray, and just as often the image before your waking eyes is just as beautiful. This life is not in our hands but rather, in the hands of He who made it. It's not for us to decide what the future will hold. If you always have plans then, more or less, you will always end up being disappointed.

That is what I believe has happened to The White Knight. He has had a vision in his mind of the life he wants to have. Yet I wonder if it's leading him astray. He has been so blinded by it that it caused him not only to loose his usual stubborn reason but also to neglect the reason of others.

Now I'm not saying not to dream or not to hope, just don't let your hopes and dreams cloud your mind until that dream is all that is left for you to see. By all means let you dreams soar, let your hopes never die, but don't be to busy starring at the clouds that you walk into a wall.

Take a Walk on the Wild Side

Insects and Androids

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." Robert Anson Heinlein

What do you worship?

I know that this is a bit dated and I do not agree with everything in the speech, but moments of it, like this one, are wonderfully insightful.

If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

-from David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College, 2005

The Road Goes Ever On and On

One’s life is a pilgrimage, not a work of art”--John Lukacs

it is how I was written

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. The world was spoken into being and with it came the story which each of us lives.

I loved the movie Inkheart to a degree that bemused all the people I made watch it with me, many of who failed to see the charm. The most captivating part for me was the character of Dustfinger, and only a little bit because he was played by the fabulous Paul Bettany.

Dustfinger is an unusual protagonist for a fantasy story--he has some magic abilities but these do not elevate him, his is not a hero or a villain just a little bit of a coward, and he is caught up in the action of the story totally against his will and his sole desire is to get home. In short he is incredibly human.

Yet along with this he is perfectly cognizant of being a character in a work of fiction. He fears meeting his author because he does not wish to know how his story ends. He is fully mindful of his character flaws, telling another character he is a coward because it is how he was written. Rising above this is something that he struggles with throughout the movie--when faced with his character flaws he insists that that is not all he is. Later, upon meeting his author and inadvertently having his fate revealed to him is reaction is telling the author "You don't control my fate. I'm not just some character in a book. And you are not my god!"

We too are characters within the story of salvation and, as we are marked by original sin, already have part of our character written out for. Yet, like Dustfinger we have free will and are not just characters--our fate is in our own hands.

I also loved the visual of the half read out characters with words covering them--literally with their story on their face.

Can You See the Real Me?

Which Side are You on?

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." Mark Twain

I don't wanna live in the Modern World

“Philosophy is not the reading of books; philosophy is not the contemplation of nature, philosophy is not the phenomenology of personal experience; philosophy is not its history,” Wilhelmsen wrote in a striking passage. “These are indispensable tools aiding a man to come to know the things that are. But that knowing is precisely knowing and nothing else. We once were given this, not too long ago, in the American Catholic academy. With a few honorable exceptions, we are given it no longer. Philosophy ultimately exists in conversation. It needs to "talked into existence." But it first must be “thought” into existence.”

Frederick Wilhelmsen, Modern Age

What about Everything?

MANALIVE, the Glory of God is Man Fully alive, live--these are phrases we keep throwing around. But what does it mean to be fully alive. Some people believe that this means to live, life on the edge, always moving, chasing the next adrenaline rush. Yet, to be fully alive can mean the exact opposite for to be truly alive means to be contemplating the eternal. this then will influence how you see and react with the world, allow you to view it with wonder and thanks and see it with a fresh perspective. This need not require a degree in philosophy, just an orientation towards truth and a willingness to question and to ponder. Yet this is something sadly lacking in todays world, which is not prone to introspection.

Josef Pieper says In Defense of Philosophy, "People are not commonly disposed, as they are simply not in the appropriate mood, to reflect on the ultimate meaning of reality as such. As a rule, therefore, we should obviously not expect that the philosophical experience and the philosophical quest would be such a common occurrence. ‘How is it with the world as such?’—this is not a question one asks while building a house, while going to court, while taking an exam. We cannot philosophize as long as our interest remains absorbed by the active pursuit of goals, when the ‘lens’ of our soul is focused on a clearly circumscribed sector, on an objective here and now, on things that are presently ‘needed’—and explicitly on anything else. (In intelligent company one can, of course, readily and always discuss any philosophical ‘problem’ tossed to it from the outside like a question on a quiz show. This is not what I am talking about. Here, I understand the philosophical quest as an existential experienced centered in the core of the human mind, a spontaneous, urgent, inescapable stirring of a person’s innermost life.) More likely than not, therefore, a challenge is required that shakes the common and ‘normal’ attitude dominating—by nature and by right—man’s everyday life; a push is needed, a shock, in order to trigger the question that reaches beyond the sphere of mere material needs, the question as to the meaning of the world and of existence: to trigger the philosophical process.”

Chasing Immortality

Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves: will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved? --Troy

Power and Glory

“The glory of God is man fully alive" This quote from St. Irenaeus is beautiful, profound and very often misunderstood. It is not permission to do what you like, whatever feels right. Rather it is a challenge, one seen more clearly if you look at the not as often quoted second half of the statement, "moreover man’s life is the vision of God." We are only fully alive when we are fulfilling the plan God has set forth for us.

This plan, this imperative to live, becomes even more crucial when one considers that our lives, that the world is a gift. As the most recent papal encyclical says;

Charity in truth places man before the astonishing experience of gift. Gratuitousness is present in our lives in many different forms, which often go unrecognized because of a purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life. The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. . . Gift by its nature goes beyond merit, its rule is that of superabundance (Paragraph 34).

By living God's plan for us we are participating in and giving thanks for the the gift of our life and the universe. But more important being alive, truly living and fulfilling God's plan for us is an act of love and an act of worship.

Call me crazy

"As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it."-- Wendell Berry

The Eternal-Or lessons of the League of the long Bow

The sacred and the eternal can be hard to detect in everyday life. And while it need not always be front and center--the little things in life have their place and their own import--it is always important and cannot be ignored. And in a world where technology is constantly increasing the pace, making reflection more rare, recognizing the eternal, the unmovable, the First Things, is essential.

As the members of the League of the Long Bow put it:

"In all our adventures," went on the other, "we have all of us taken up some definite position and stuck to it, however difficult it might be; that was the whole fun of it. But our critics did not stick to their own position --not even to their own conventional or conservative position. . .The modern world is materialistic, but it isn't solid. It isn't hard or stern or ruthless in pursuit of its purpose, or all the things that newspapers and novels say it is; and sometimes actually praise it for being. Materialism isn't like stone; it is like mud, and liquid mud at that."

'There's something in what you say," said Owen Hood, "and I am inclined to add something to it. On a rough reckoning of the chances in Modern England, I should say the situation is something like this. In that dubious and wavering atmosphere it is very unlikely there would ever be a revolution, or any vital reform. But if there were, I believe on my soul that it might be successful. I believe everything else would be too weak and wobbly to stand against it."

When the Revolution Comes

I am back to writing real posts! Hopefully on a semi-regular basis, although we will see how that goes with me about to be a student again. But it was either that or let this become a blog of quotes I like (which there is nothing wrong with, as I really like quotes). Anyways, post!

The image of barricades has long enthralled me, as have tales of revolutions and hopeless last stands. I love stories about 1916 Ireland, Prague Spring, Les Mis, every other revolution France has had, and V for Vendetta among many more. I followed the recent "twitter revolution" in Iran with more enthusiasm and precision than I normally follow the news. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, I no longer think that if there is a revolution it will occur on the streets but rather in the home.

The New York Times recently ran an article about the decline of cooking in America. Very few people make anything from scratch anymore, something that has become so acute that the definition of cooking as broadened to include opening a bag of pre-washed and cut lettuce and opening a can of salad dressing to pour on it. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that most meals are now eaten on the run or in front of a television.

The kitchen used to be the soul of the home. It was where the family gathered, where they were nurtured, and over the family dinner table was one of the chief sources of family time. Making something from scratch is also a gift of self, one so strong that eating another person's food, partaking of their hospitality, used to be enough to temporarily make you part of their family and provide you that protection.

The change then must come not on the streets but in the home. The focus must once again be set on people and time must be taken to provide for each other, to create, and most improtantly to share with one another, to break bread.

On some hidden path

"Not all who wander are lost."-- J.R.R. Tolkien

A Matter of Perspective

An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor." St. Augustine The City of God

Poets and Dreamers

From Walden. I will post for real soon--I feel like I have so much to say but not time to sit down and get it into a comprehensive form. But I found this very pertinent right now.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that "there was a king's son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father's ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme."(25) I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be. If a man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where, think you, would the "Mill-dam" go to? If he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

I don't wanna grow up

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."--Pablo Picasso

Hope Unstoppable

Take me up and hold me gently
Raise me up and hold me high
Through the nights under darkness
Will come a day when we will fly
And although we've been rejected
And although we've been outcast
We will find a new tomorrow
When we come to rest at last
And we will stand there proudly
And we will never walk alone
And we will be returned
Back to our home