- "The most delicious piece of knowledge for me is that I am a child of God. That is so mind-boggling, that this "it" created everything, and I am a child of "it." It means I am connected to every thing and every body. That's all delicious and wonderful--until I'm forced to realize that the bigot, the brute, the batterer is also a child of "it". Now, he may not know it, but I'm obliged to know that he is. I have to. That is my contract. What fascinates me is the varying ways we approach God. And shape God and paint God, make a statue of God. It amazes me. Once I went to Texas to a conference called "Facing Evil." At one point, some fellow from Texas got up and said, "I really have seen evil, I have felt its force. I went to Germany and I went into the concentration camps." I stood and said, "Do you mean to tell me that we've come from all over the world and we're going to talk nonsense? You had to go to Germany, you here in Texas who refused Mexican-Americans a chance to vote, you who don't want them to even live next to you, you who have your own history of slavery--you had to go to Germany? I don't wanna hear it." It seems to me that if we accept--if I accept, anyway--the fact of evil, I accept the fact of good. We're all doing what Anne Sexton calls "that awful rowing toward God." That excites me. It gives me incredible delight to be alive, and prepares me with as little fear as possible for death. It remains that I live a very nice life, most of the time."~ Maya Angelou
- "No sooner downstairs after the night's rest And in the the door Than you started to dance a step In the middle of the kitchen floor. And as you danced You whistled. You made your own music Always in tune with yourself. Well, nearly always, anyway. Your'e buried now In Lislaughtin Abbey And whenever I think of you I go back beyound the old man Mind and body broken To find the unbroken man. It is the moment before the dance begins, Your lips are enjoying themselves Whistling in the air. Whatever happens cannot happen In the time I have to spare I see you dancing, father." ~Brendan Kennelly
- “You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’.” ~Erin McKean
- "In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity." ~St. Augustine
- "You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know." ~Wiliam Wilberforce
- HAMLET: Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, That would not let me sleep: methought I lay. Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly— And praised be rashness for it—let us know, Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall: and that should learn us. There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will—Shakespear
jan 9 2015 ∞
jun 19 2015 +