tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58590412012-02-16T10:33:13.407-05:00Literary LiftsWit, humor, wisdom and insight I wish I had...ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comBlogger391100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1133035739394382222005-11-26T15:07:00.000-05:002005-11-26T15:08:59.403-05:00When we can become really honest with ourselves, and deeply ponder what we want, where we want to go, what we want to do, we are at the perfect beginning, because we are, right at that moment, at the heart of who we are, and any action taken from that place is going to be a glorious one.-- "i have chosen to stay and fight,"by Margaret ChoChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1133034796096189762005-11-26T14:52:00.000-05:002005-11-26T14:53:16.106-05:00Strange, there's so much religion in the world, but only enough to make us fight over who is right, not enough to make us love one another.-- "i have chosen to stay and fight,"by Margaret ChoChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1133034055613045722005-11-26T14:40:00.000-05:002005-11-26T14:40:55.613-05:00Why do we not believe hysterical women? Hysterical women are always right.-- "i have chosen to stay and fight,"by Margaret ChoChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1133033956837953852005-11-26T14:38:00.000-05:002005-11-26T14:39:16.836-05:00The hotness is not about age, looks, body type, race; it's about honesty, knowing who you are and being who you are, without trying to front yourself as being better than you really are. It's about the deep-down authenticity of self, then looking it, living it, loving it.-- "i have chosen to stay and fight,"by Margaret ChoChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1133033833948382002005-11-26T14:35:00.000-05:002005-11-26T14:37:13.946-05:00What people need to understand is that the pussy is the Front Door of Life. Do you get that? Nobody really thinks about it like that up in the dusty ancient cabinet of old white men that think they know everything. Woman has the right to let someone in, or to tell them to come back another time, or even to have a sign that says NO SOLICITORS. Woman has the right to be exalted, cherished and ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1133033714935767052005-11-26T14:33:00.000-05:002005-11-26T14:35:14.936-05:00Do we forget our roots when we move on up, or do we take them with us and continue to fight for racial equality? Do we have a responsibility to fight for those who still struggle for a piece of American pie, or can we merely savor what we have and let everyone else fend for themselves, and live in the penthouse of privilege without the guilt of obligation? Finally, has our own attainment of ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1133033542122840662005-11-26T14:31:00.000-05:002005-11-26T14:32:42.510-05:00The terrible thing about invisibility is the lengths we will go to be seen.-- "i have chosen to stay and fight,"by Margaret ChoChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1127580525320289722005-09-24T11:46:00.000-05:002005-09-24T11:49:23.830-05:00I felt like a Jane Austen heroine all of a sudden ..., confusedly looking on at all the people she loves, their myriad unpredictable couplings and uncouplings. ... Just jokes and friendships and romances and delicious declarations of independence. ... We none of us knew for sure what kind we were, exactly, but as long as we were the kind that could sit around eating together and having a lovely ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1113412896944114512005-04-13T12:18:00.000-05:002005-04-13T12:21:36.946-05:00Jesus had but to give a nod of agreement and he could have constructed Christendom, not on four shaky Gospels and a defeated man nailed on a Cross, but on a basis of sound socio-economic planning and principles .... Every utopia could have been brought to pass, every hope have been realized and every dream been made to come true. What a benefactor, then, Jesus would have been. Acclaimed, ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1110945017568625612005-03-15T22:38:00.000-05:002005-03-15T22:50:17.570-05:00... the gospel accounts of the first Christmas ... Jesus was born far from home, with no midwife, extended family, or village chorus present. ... How many times did Mary review the angel's words as she felt the Son of God kicking against the walls of her uterus? ... We know nothing of Jesus' grandparents. What must they have felt? ... it seems that God arranged the most humiliating ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1103645373202558852004-12-21T11:07:00.000-05:002004-12-21T11:09:33.203-05:00Unconditional love. That's what this is. I love him, as is, fully. I've had to stop arm wrestling with the facts. Why me? Didn't I already have a big love once? And lost it? So why should I get it again? I've had to stop trying to look for cracks and flaws to prove that it's not as good as it seems. Because it's as good as it seems. Even when we fight, we fight inside the container of ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1103645221981515962004-12-21T11:03:00.000-05:002004-12-21T11:07:01.983-05:00What's painful and wonderful about loving somebody is loving their small things, like the way he is able to smile when he sips his wine, the way his hands fall down at his sides, fingers slightly cupped, or the way he is conducting the orchestra on the radio. Or now, the way he is lighting candles, just now this one in front of me. This is the one he lit first, actually. The one in front of meChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1102135413163769942004-12-03T23:41:00.000-05:002004-12-03T23:43:33.163-05:00It's strange to remember someone you've known all along. It isn't like returning to the home you grew up in and noticing how it left its shape on you, how the walls you've raised and the doors you've opened since then have all followed the design you saw for the first time there. It's closer to returning home and seeing your mother or sister, who are old enough not to have grown since you last ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1090897534808168962004-07-26T22:00:00.000-05:002004-07-26T22:06:06.456-05:00We worship money instead of honor. A billionaire, in our estimation, is much greater in these days in the eyes of the people than the public servant who works for public interest. It makes no difference if the billionaire rode to wealth on the sweat of little children and the blood of underpaid labor. No one ever considered Carnegie libraries steeped in the blood of the Homestead steelworkers,ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1090896973401640982004-07-26T21:51:00.000-05:002004-07-26T22:07:11.066-05:00Some others have a notion that if they can get high offices and hold up themselves as models of virtue to a gaping public in long-winded high-sounding speeches that they have reached the highest pinnacle of success. It seems to me that the ability to hand out self-praise makes most men successes in their own minds anyway. Some of the world's greatest failures are really greater than some of theChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1085079112666985822004-05-20T13:49:00.000-05:002004-05-20T13:52:26.330-05:00I find companionship in Buechner's writings because for me, too, faith is a Pascalian gamble. Though I spend my life in pursuit of God, I often sense that God lies just around the next bend in the trail, just behind the next tree in the forest. I keep walking because I like where the journey has led me thus far, because other paths seem more problematic than my own, and because I yearn for the ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1085078964833649182004-05-20T13:47:00.000-05:002004-05-20T13:49:24.833-05:00... yet it surprises [Frederick Buechner] not at all that God gives us only "momentary glimpses into a mystery of such depth, power and beauty that if we were to see it head on, in any way other than in glimpses, I suspect we would be annihilated."
-- "Soul Survivor," by Philip YanceyChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1085078846801417982004-05-20T13:45:00.000-05:002004-05-20T13:47:26.800-05:00"Perhaps God indeed saves his deepest silence for his saints, and if so I do not merit that silence. I have intellectual doubts, of course. But as John Updike puts it, if there is no God then the universe is a freak show, and I do not experience it as a freak show. Though I have had neither the maleficent or the beatific vision, I have heard whispers from the wings of the stage."
-- FrederickChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1085078726830032662004-05-20T13:44:00.000-05:002004-07-26T21:58:02.573-05:00"In two thousand years, we have not worked out the kinks. We positively glorify them. Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter."
-- Annie Dillard, in "Soul Survivor,"
by Philip YanceyChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1085078629978768462004-05-20T13:42:00.000-05:002004-05-20T13:43:49.976-05:00"It's all a matter of keeping my eyes open," she says. "Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them. The least we can do is try to be there ... so that creation need not play to an empty house."
-- Annie Dillard, from "Soul Survivor,"
by Philip YanceyChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1080703609895477232004-03-30T22:23:00.000-05:002004-03-30T22:31:20.420-05:00"We have systems here to explain everything -- except how to live. And we have categories for every person on earth, but who can explain just one person?" ... "I have known human beings who, in the face of unbearable daily stress, respond with resilience, even nobility. And I have known others who live in a comfortable, even luxurious environment and yet seem utterly lost. We have both sides ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1080703348281305882004-03-30T22:19:00.000-05:002004-03-30T22:26:04.733-05:00I have begun to realize how hard it is for a lot of people to think of living without someone to look down upon, really look down upon. It is not just that they will feel cheated out of someone to hate; it is that they will be compelled to look more closely at themselves, at what they don't like in themselves. My heart goes out to people I hear called rednecks; they have little, if anything, ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1080703096168045512004-03-30T22:12:00.000-05:002004-03-30T22:21:52.670-05:00A big danger for us is the temptation to follow the people we are opposing. They call us names, so we call them names. Our names may not be "redneck" or "cracker"; they may be names that have a sociological or psychological veneer to them, a gloss; but they are names, nonetheless -- "ignorant," or "brainwashed," or "duped" or "hysterical" or "poor-white" or "consumed by hate." I know you will ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1079456585601227662004-03-16T12:03:00.000-05:002004-03-16T12:06:22.530-05:00The great societies of the West have been moving away from an underlying belief in the value of a single human soul. We tend to view history in terms of groups of people: classes, political parties, races, sociological groupings. We apply labels to each other, and explain behavior and ascribe worth on the basis of those labels. After prolonged exposure to Dr. Brand, I realized that I had been ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1079449527846779512004-03-16T10:05:00.000-05:002004-03-16T10:09:58.390-05:00"We doctors experience a rude awakening after medical school," Brand continued. "After studying the marvels of the human body, suddenly I was thrust into a position much like the complaint desk of a department store. Not once did a person visit my office to express appreciation for a beautifully functioning kidney or lung. They came to complain that something was not working properly. Only ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1079449156148370502004-03-16T09:59:00.000-05:002004-03-16T10:11:06.140-05:00How could a good God allow such a blemished world to exist? [Dr. Paul] Brand had responded to my complaints one by one. Disease? Did I know that of the twenty-four thousand species of bacteria, all but a few hundred are healthful, not harmful? Plants could not produce oxygen, nor could animals digest food without the assistance of bacteria. Indeed, bacteria constitute half of all living ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1079448581159625612004-03-16T09:49:00.000-05:002004-03-16T09:56:08.560-05:00When the London Times asked a number of writers for essays on the topic "What's Wrong with the World?" Chesterton sent in the reply shortest and most to the point:
Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G.K. Chesterton
...
Chesterton himself said that the modern age is characterized by a sadness that calls for a new kind of prophet, not like prophets of old who reminded people that they were ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1079365610035583862004-03-15T10:46:00.000-05:002004-03-15T10:50:25.343-05:00Scott Simon put words to it in a National Public Radio editorial after the WTC attacks. Patriotism is not based on a blind belief that the United States has no need to change, he said. God knows we need to change in many ways. Our love for America rests on the belief that the changes needed are more likely to occur here than anywhere else in the world.
-- "Soul Survivor," by Philip YanceyChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1078159322716335622004-03-01T11:42:00.000-05:002004-03-01T11:44:58.513-05:00I believe that on the eve of a new millenium, it is time to break our silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights.... For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.
The voices of this ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1077649961925109172004-02-24T14:12:00.000-05:002004-02-24T14:15:30.030-05:00[Mandela] made the expected remarks to welcome us. Then he said something that left me in awe: While he was pleased to host so many dignitaries, he was most pleased to have in attendance three of his former jailers from Robben Island who had treated him with respect during his imprisonment. He asked them to stand so he could introduce them to the crowd. ... When I got to know Mandela better, heChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1077041190803936092004-02-17T13:06:00.000-05:002004-02-17T13:09:24.950-05:00The author Jane O'Reilly, who came of age in the 1950s, wrote a famous essay for Ms. magazine in 1972 recounting the moments in her life when she realized she was being devalued because she was female. She described the instant of revelation as a click! -- like the mechanism that triggers a flashbulb. It could be as blatant as the help-wanted ads that, until the mid-sixties, were divided into ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1077039786013800792004-02-17T12:43:00.000-05:002004-02-17T12:45:44.013-05:00I wasn't born a First Lady or a Senator. I wasn't born a Democrat. I wasn't born a lawyer or an advocate for women's rights and human rights. I wasn't born a wife or mother. I was born an American in the middle of the twentieth century, a fortunate time and place. I was free to make choices unavailable to past generations of women in my own country and inconceivable to many women in the ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1071795271032460562003-12-18T19:53:00.000-05:002003-12-18T19:55:09.996-05:00Investigative television shows like 60 Minutes are always finding someone on death row who didn't do it. They never conclude he really did do it. It's puzzling to viewers because someone out there is murdering people.
-- "Common Nonsense Addressed to the Reading Public,"
by Andy RooneyChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1071795110758306002003-12-18T19:49:00.000-05:002003-12-18T19:53:01.436-05:00While I don't understand the airline business or its problems, I see them doing small things wrong that I do understand. It makes me suspicious of the intelligence they use with their major problems. One airline I have used frequently proudly serves "warm nuts." I am sitting strapped to my seat, a captive audience seething at being forced to listen to the commercials over the intercom after ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1069554697158550422003-11-22T21:30:00.000-05:002003-11-22T21:32:03.676-05:00The idea of having a cup of coffee is usually better than the coffee.
-- "Common Nonsense Addressed to the Reading Public,"
by Andy RooneyChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1067623162417640252003-10-31T12:59:00.000-05:002003-10-31T12:59:24.650-05:00[A]n inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind, one's country, friends and family . . . should indeed be the great AIM and END of all learning.
-- Benjamin Franklin, in "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life," by Walter IsaacsonChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1065028833732038812003-10-01T12:20:00.000-05:002003-10-01T12:20:33.580-05:00Thus, to imagine an infinite universe was merely to grant almighty God His proper due.
-- "Galileo's Daughter," by Dava SobelChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1064601988733396032003-09-26T13:45:00.000-05:002003-09-26T13:46:28.220-05:00As earnestly as men may seek to understand the workings of the universe, they must remember that God is not hampered by their limited logic -- that all observed effects may have been wrought by Him in any one of an infinite number of omnipotent ways, and these must ever evade mortal comprehension.
-- "Galileo's Daughter," by Dava SobelChaEsqnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5859041.post-1064501855829101392003-09-25T09:54:00.000-05:002003-09-25T09:57:59.096-05:00I have been missing the point.
The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person.
The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be?
What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts?
-- from "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,"
by Rebecca Wells
***
Whatever the course of our lives, we should receive them as the highest ChaEsqnoreply@blogger.com