Buying Books

It's against my principles to buy a book I haven't read, it's like buying a dress you haven't tried on...

-Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road, 44.

The Sofa

I sing the Sofa. I who lately sang
Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touched with awe
The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand
Escaped with pain from that adventurous flight,
Now seek repose upon an humbler theme...

-William Cowper

Hope to the Last!

"Hope to the last!" said Newman, clapping him on the back. "Always hope; that's a dear boy. Never leave off hoping; it don't answer. Do you mind me, Nick? it don't answer. Don't leave a stone unturned. It's always something, to know you've done the most you could. But, don't leave off hoping, or it's of no use doing anything. Hope, hope, to the last!"

-Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

Feast Days

The forms and rites of Christmas Day are meant merely to give the last push to people who are afraid to be festive. Father Christmas exists to haul us out of bed and make us partake of meals too beautiful to be called breakfasts.

-G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, January 8, 1910.

Hallelujah!

The kingdom of this world
is become
the kingdom of our Lord
and of His Christ
and He shall reign
forever and ever...

-G. F. Handel (calligraphy by Timothy R. Botts)

Of the Father's Love Begotten

Of the Father’s love begotten
Ere the world began to be
He is alpha and omega
He the source, the ending he
Of the things that are, that have been
And that future years shall see
Evermore and evermore

Oh ye heights of Heaven adore him
Angel hosts his praises sing
Clouds, dominions bow before him
And extol our God and King
Let no tongue on earth be silent
Every voice in concert ring
Evermore and evermore

Christ to thee with God the Father
And O Holy Ghost, to thee
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving
And unwearied praises be
Honor, glory and dominion
And eternal victory
Evermore and evermore

-Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-413)

Days

Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.

Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and the thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.

Through the calm eye of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehow

on the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like the impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.

No wonder you find yourself
perched on the top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more.
Just another Wednesday

you whisper,
then holding your breath,
place this cup on yesterday’s saucer
without the slightest clink.

-Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus

Come, thou long-expected Jesus,
Born to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us;
Let us find our rest in thee.

Israel’s strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth thou art,
Dear Desire of every of nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a king,
Born to reign in us forever,
Thou thy gracious kingdom bring.

By thine own eternal spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By thine all-sufficient merit
Raise us to thy glorious throne

-Charles Wesley

A Quiet Chamber: Part IV

There, shedding a dim and varied light, was the Christmas tree my father had decorated alone, every single strand of tinsel hanging straight down of its own slim weight, since he hung them individually, patiently, and would not hasten the duty by tossing them in fistfuls (tradition!)—the tree he had hidden three days ago behind a knobless door.

There, in various places about the room, were seven piles of gifts, a pile for each of us.

There, in the midst of them, my mother sat smiling on the floor, her skirts encircling her, her own radiance smiting my eyes, for she verged on laughter. My mother always laughed when she gave presents, however long the day had been before, however crazy she had almost gone. I began to blink rapidly.

But there, unaccountably, was my father, standing center in the room and gazing straight at me. At me. And this is the wonder fixed in my memory: that the man himself was filled with a yearning, painful expectation; but that he, like me, was withholding still his own excitement—on account of me.

Everything else in this room was just as it had been the year before, and the year before that. But this was new. This thing I had never seen before: that my father, too, had passed his day in the hope that risks a violent hurt. My father, too, had had to trust the promises against their disappointments. So said his steady eyes on me. But among the promises to which my father had committed his soul, his hope and his faith, the most important one was this: that his eldest son should soften and be glad.

If I had grown adult in 1954, then lo, how like a child my father had become! The colored lights painted the side of his face. He gazed at me, waiting, waiting for me, waiting for his Christmas to be received by his son and returned to him again.

And I began to cry. O my father!

Silently, merely spilling the tears and staring straight back at him, defenseless because there was no need for defenses, I cried—glad and unashamed. Because what was this room, for so long locked, which I was entering? Why, it was my own heart. And why had I been afraid? Because I thought I’d find it empty, a hard, unfeeling thing.

But there, in the room, was my father.

And there, in my father, was the love that had furnished this room, preparing it for us no differently than he had last year prepared it, yet trusting and yearning, desiring our joy.

And what else could such a love be, but my Jesus drawing near?

Look, then, what I have found in my father’s room, in my heart after all: the dearest Lord Jesus, holy child—

The nativity of our Lord.

I leaned my cheek against the doorjamb and grinned like a grown-up ten years old, and sobbed as if I were two. And my father moved from the middle of the room and walked toward me, still empty-handed; but he spread his hands and gathered me to himself. And I put my arms around his harder body. And so we, both of us, were full.

This is the way that it was in the olden days.

-Walter Wangerin, The Manger is Empty, 64-66.

A Quiet Chamber: Part III

...It was tradition, upon returning home, that we change our church clothes into pajamas, and gather in the kitchen.

Across the hall the door was still closed—but its knob had been replaced. I saw that knob, and my heart kicked inside of me. So I chewed my bottom lip and frowned like thunder: No! It won’t be what it ought to be! It never is.

Adult.

And always, always the hoops of my father’s tradition: we lined up in the kitchen from the youngest to the oldest. I stood last in a line of seven. My littlest sister was clasping her hands and raising her shining, saintly face to my father, who stood before her facing us. Her hair hung down her back to the waist. Blithe child! Her blue eyes burst with trust. I pitied her.

My father prayed a prayer, tormenting me. For the prayer evoked the very images I was refusing: infant Jesus, gift of God, love come down from heaven—all of the things that conspired to make me glad at Christmas. My poor heart bucked and disputed that prayer. No! I would not hope. No! I would not permit excitement. No! No! I would not be set up for a second disappointment.

We were a single minute from entering the room.

And I might have succeeded at severity—

—except that then we sang a song, the same song we always sung, and the singing undid me altogether. Music destroys me. A hymn will reduce me to infancy.

Nine bare voices, unaccompanied in the kitchen, we sang: Ah, dearest Jesus, hold child—and I began to tremble.—Make thee a bed, soft, undefiled—The very sweetness of the melody caused my defenses to fall: I began to hope, and I began to fear, both at once. I began to wish, and wishing made me terrified. I began all over again to believe, but I had never ceased my unbelief. I began to panic.—Within my heart; that it may be—Dreadfully now, I yearned for some good thing to be found in that room, but “dreadfully,” I say, because I was an adult; I’d put away the childish things; I’d been disillusioned and knew no good to be in there. This was a pitiless sham!

—A quiet chamber kept for thee.

My father whispered, “Now.”

He turned to the door.

Little squeals escaped my sister.

He grasped the knob and opened the door upon a muted colored light; and one by one his children crept through the door and into that room.

All of his children save one. I lingered in the doorway, looking, not breathing.

-Walt Wangerin, The Manger is Empty, 63-64.

A Quiet Chamber: Part II

Let me be more specific. We were living in Edmonton, Alberta, then. The year was 1954, and I was ten, the oldest of seven children. I’ve implied that we were all excited on that particular Christmas Eve morning, and so we were; but though my brothers and sisters could manifest their excitement with unbridled delight, I could not mine. I absolutely refused to acknowledge or signal excitement. They loved the sweet contractions in their stomachs. I was afraid of them. For I had that very year become an adult: silent, solemn, watchful, and infinitely cautious.

So my brothers and sisters laughed and clapped the day away. They spilled colored sugar on cookie dough and covered the kitchen table with a sweet mess, all unworried, unafraid. They claimed, by faster stabs of the finger, their individual treasures from Sears catalogs, and so they allowed their dreams to soar, and so they passed the day. I didn’t blame them. They were innocent; they could dare the dangers they didn’t see. These children could rush headlong toward the evening, recklessly. But I could not.

I held myself in a severe restraint. Because—what if you hope, and it doesn’t happen? It’s treacherous to hope. The harder you hope, the more vulnerable you become. And what if you believe a thing, but it isn’t true? Well, the instant you see the deception, you die a little. And it hurts exactly in your soul, where once you had believed. I knew all this. I had learned that excitement is composed of hope and faith together—but of faith and hope in promises yet unkept—and I was not about to let excitement run away with me, or I would certainly crash as I had crashed the year before.

Last Christmas Eve, in the midst of opening his presents, my brother Paul had burst into tears. I didn’t know—and I don’t know—why. But I was shocked to discover that the Christmas time was not inviolate. I was horrified that pain could invade the holy ceremony. And I was angry that my father had not protected my brother from tears. There was a fraud here. The traditions were as thin as a crystal globe and empty. I could do nothing but sob in sympathy with my brother, nothing but grieve to the same degree that I had believed.

But by ten I was an adult; and if Christmas gave me nothing really, and if the traditions could not protect me from assault, then I would protect myself.

No: the more excited I was, the more I was determined not to be, and the more I molded my face into a frown.

I’m speaking with precision now. None of us could stand the season’s excitement. But I was frightened by mine and chose to show it to no one, not to my father, not to my mother, and not to myself.

Adult.

-Walt Wangerin, The Manger is Empty, 59-60.

A Quiet Chamber: Part I

...But this is the way it was especially on Christmas Eve day:

We spent the major portion of the morning at that upstairs window, giggling, whispering, and waiting for the milkman to come. Tradition. My mother was glad to be shed of us on the day she “ran crazy” with preparations. I think we knew that then. But for our own part, we did truly want to see some evidence of how cold it was outside. It was important that Christmas Eve be cold. And it was the milkman’s mare, you see, who presented us with evidence.

So here came the mare in a slow walk, nodding, drawing the wagon behind her even when her master was rushing up sidewalks, making deliveries. She never stopped. And the mare was blowing plumes of steam from her nostrils. Her chin has grown a beard of hoarfrost. Her back was blanketed. The blanket smoked. The air was cold. The air was very cold, and our stomachs contracted with joy within us, and some of us laughed at the rightness of the weather. So here came the mare, treading a hardened snow. The snow banked six feet high on either side of the street, except at sidewalks and driveways; the snow was castles we would be kings of tomorrow. The snow collected on the mare, whose forelock and eyelashes were white. She shivered the flesh on her flanks, sending off small showers of snow; and so did we—shiver. Ah, cold! The air was a crystal bowl of cold! The day was perfectly right.

And we could scarcely stand the excitement.

Downstairs, directly below us in the house, was a room that had been locked two days ago against our entering in. This was my father’s tradition, which he never varied year to year. Always, he locked the door by removing its knob, transfiguring thereby the very spirit of the room; all we could do was spy at the knob-hole and wonder at the mysteries concealed inside. My brothers and sisters pestered that hole continually, chirping among themselves like snowbirds on a holly tree, puffing their imaginations like feathers all around them.

Tonight, on Christmas Eve itself, we would all line up, and my father would slip the knob back into the door, and one by one we would enter the wondrous room. This much we knew: the Christmas tree was in there.

Therefore, even in the morning at the upstairs window, we could scarcely stand the excitement.

Tonight! And lo: it was very, very cold.

-Walt Wangerin, The Manger is Empty, 57-59.

The House of 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

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

...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!”

-Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, 79-80.

Dark and Light

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shined.

-Isaiah 9:2

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

God rest ye merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our Saviour
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

From God our Heavenly Father
A blessed Angel came;
And unto certain Shepherds
Brought tidings of the same:
How that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by Name.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

"Fear not then," said the Angel,
"Let nothing you affright,
This day is born a Saviour
Of a pure Virgin bright,
To free all those who trust in Him
From Satan's power and might."
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

Hotel Shampoo

Natural whole wheat protein and Irish moss help strengthen and shield hair from environmental damage. Gentle enough for everyday use.

John 1:14

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

-Trans. Eugene H. Peterson, The Message

Incarnation

Rome was a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven, a mass of filth convoluted in a triple knot as in an intestinal obstruction. Dacians, Heruleans, Scythians, Sarmatians, Hyperboreans, heavy wheels without spokes, eyes sunk in fat, sodomy, double chins, illiterate emperors, fish fed on the flesh of learned slaves...all crammed into the passages of the Coliseum, and all wretched.

And then, into this tasteless heap of gold and marble, He came, light and clothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, Galilean, and at that moment gods and nations ceased to be and man came into being—man the carpenter, man the plowman, man the shepherd, with his flock of sheep at sunset, man who does not sound in the least proud, man thankfully celebrated in all the cradle songs of mothers and in all the picture galleries the world over.

-Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

The Magendanz Lights

Once again the Magendanzes have outdone themselves with the biggest display of Christmas lights in town – a little Las Vegas – with Santa, Tiny Tim, and Ebenezer Scrooge all standing around the manger; with six wise men, not three, and Frosty, and Rudolph, and the Grinch.

- Garrison Keillor, Now it is Christmas Again

Lux Venit

Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For behold, darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will be seen upon you.
And nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your rising.

Isaiah 60:1-3

The Wizard's Pupil

TIME like a sullen school-boy stands
Beside the Wizard's knee,
The book of life between his hands,
And spells out painfully
The crabbed Christ-cross row,
The Alpha and the O.

His grimy fingers slowly trace
Each odd, repellent sign
In a dull fear to lose the place;
His voice, with listless whine,
Drawls through the scheduled hour
The syllables of power.

While Zeta is so like to Xi
Small thought has he to spare
For what the screed may signify,
(The Wizard in His chair
Smiles, knowing ere He look
All that is in the book).

But sometimes ill and sometimes well,
Reluctant and perplexed,
He gropes and stammers through the spell
From one sound to the next;
And when the last is read
God's Word wakes the dead.

-Dorothy Sayers

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

-Latin, 12th century; trans. John Mason Neale, 1851.

This Little Babe

This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan's fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak unarmed wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field,
His naked breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows made of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns cold and need,
And feeble flesh his warrior's steed.

His camp is pitched in a stall,
His bulwark but a broken wall;
The crib his trench, haystalks his stakes,
Of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus as sure his foe to wound,
The Angels' trumps alarum sound.

My soul with Christ join thou in fight,
Stick to the tents that he hath pight;
Within his crib is surest ward,
This little Babe will be thy guard;
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,
Then flit not from this heavenly boy.

-Robert Southwell

Downtown St. Paul

Hey kid, let's do a show
I know a place where we can go
It's in hustlin', bustlin' downtown St. Paul
And the World Theater is the name of the hall
There's no sweeter little theater that you ever saw
It's on the corner of Exchange and Wabasha
So dust off the seats and scrape off the gum
Cause World Theater here we come!

-Garrison Keillor

Best Imitation of Myself

I feel like a quote out of context,
Withholding the rest,
So I can be for you what you want to see
I’ve got the gestures and sounds
Got the timing down
It's uncanny, yeah, you’d think it was me
Do you think I should take a class
To lose my Southern accent?
Did I make me up, or make a face till it stuck?
I do the best imitation of myself

-Ben Folds

What's Wrong With the World?

Dear Sirs, I am.

-G. K. Chesterton (letter sent to The Times in response to the above question)

Stop It!

-Bob Newhart

The Days of Noah

"This is like the days of Noah to me:
as I swore that the waters of Noah
should no more go over the earth,
so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you,
and will not rebuke you.
For the mountains may depart
and the hills be removed,
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,"
says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

-Isaiah 54:9-10

Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pie is nothing but mediocrity. The best one you ever ate wasn't that much better than the worst. It's just an excuse to eat nutmeg.

-Garrison Keillor

When Cows Go Bad

The better stuff a creature is made of—the cleverer and stronger and freer it is—then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong. A cow cannot be very good or very bad; a dog can be both better and worse; a child better and worse still; an ordinary man, still more so; a man of genius still more so; a superhuman spirit best—or worst—of all.

-C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 53.

Vade Mecum

I want the scissors to be sharp
and the table to be perfectly level
when you cut me out of my life
and paste me in that book you always carry.

-Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room

In the Wilderness Prepare

In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

-Isaiah 40:3-5

St. Crispen's Day Speech

This day is called the Feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tiptoe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words–
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester–
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

-William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene III.

A Decent Fellow

What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.

-A. A. Milne

A Fable

Once upon a time there was a teacher who set his class an examination to perform. And when the youths had finished he marked their scripts. But at the end of his labors he found that, by evil chance, he had worked with a total of 99. And, being an industrious man, he converted all the marks into percentages.

So it was that a pupil with 58 marks gained 58.585858 . . . per cent and a pupil with 73 marks gained 73.737373 . . . per cent, and others likewise.

And when the time was come that he should return the scripts to his class, being an honest man as well as industrious, he confessed what he had done and delivered to them their marks in the form of percentages.

Until he came to one named Smith whose work was perfect, to whom perforce he had awarded the percentage 99.999999 . . . per cent.

"So, Smith Minor," saith he, "though I find no fault in you, yet your percentage falls short of the full total of 100. What say you?"

"Sir," saith Smith Minor, moved to anger, "I call that the limit."

-Fantasia Mathematica, ed. Clifton Fadiman, 294.

The Unfortunate Topologist

A burleycue dancer, a pip
Named Virginia, could peel in a zip;
But she read science fiction
And died of constriction
Attempting a Moebius strip.

-Cyril Kornbluth, Fantasia Mathematica, ed. Clifton Fadiman, 266.

There Once Was a Breathy Baboon

There once was a breathy baboon
Who always breathed down a bassoon,
For he said, "It appears
That in billions of years
I shall certainly hit on a tune."

-Sir Arthur Eddington, Fantasia Mathematica, ed. Clifton Fadiman, 267.

For All Practical Purposes

A professor, asked what he meant by the phrase ["for all practical purposes"] explained:

"Suppose all the young men in this class were to line up on one side of the room, and all the young ladies on the other. At a given signal, the two lines move toward each other, halving the distance between them. At a second signal, they move forward again, halving the remaining distance; and so on at each succeeding signal. Theoretically, the boys would never reach the girls; but actually, after a relatively small number of moves, they would be close enough for all practical purposes."

-C. Stanley Ogilvey, Fantasia Mathematica, ed. Clifton Fadiman, 284.

Mission

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it—if I do but keep His Commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me—still He knows what He is about.

-John Henry Cardinal Newman

Sneezes

Not long ago, I walked out the door of my house on a clear, cold morning and was thinking pure business when, halfway across the porch, I felt that familiar pleasant wave in the chest—the magnetic field of the sneeze—and the long intake of breath and the pulsation in the head. I wound up, reared back, and delivered a sneeze worthy of Pavarotti—a six-syllable sneeze that sounded like "onomatopoeia!" On the accented syllable I stamped my foot (wham!) on the wooden floor, and then the majestic cry (and wham!) came bouncing back to me off the house across the street. I thought, God bless you! I said good morning to the bunch of children who wait for their schoolbus on my corner. They appeared to be awestruck. I climbed into my car and drove off, and at the corner the stoplight turned a luminous green.

-Garrison Keillor, We Are Still Married, 163-164.

Journalistic Courage

Real sensationalism, of which I happen to be very fond, may be either moral or immoral. But even when it is most immoral, it requires moral courage. For it is one of the most dangerous things on earth genuinely to surprise anybody. If you make any sentient creature jump, you render it by no means improbable that it will jump on you. But the leaders of this movement have no moral courage or immoral courage; their whole method consists in saying, with large and elaborate emphasis, the things which everybody else says casually, and without remembering what they have said. When they brace themselves up to attack anything, they never reach the point of attacking anything which is large and real, and would resound with the shock. They do not attack the army as men do in France, or the judges as men do in Ireland, or the democracy itself as men did in England a hundred years ago. They attack something like the War Office—something, that is, which everybody attacks and nobody bothers to defend, something which is an old joke in fourth-rate comic papers. just as a man shows he has a weak voice by straining it to shout, so they show the hopelessly unsensational nature of their minds when they really try to be sensational. With the whole world full of big and dubious institutions, with the whole wickedness of civilization staring them in the face, their idea of being bold and bright is to attack the War Office. They might as well start a campaign against the weather, or form a secret society in order to make jokes about mothers-in-law.

-G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, "The Mildness of the Yellow Press"

Grasshopper

This business of having one last leg
Must take some getting used to
When I see the grasshopper on the porch,
He looks less like a grasshopper and more like a car wreck

Nose down, dead still, not a body
So much as some great damage
And I know that it was no accident
Deciding it had to be done was the hardest part

He thought about it for a long, long time
Well, he loved his leg, but it was broken
And how could another one grow
Until he ate the first?

One morning, he felt a tickle
He knew might be a new leg sprouting
So carefully, so very carefully
He pulled out from under his grief and took the first bite

-Jeanne Murray Walker

Expectations

That boy had the highest of expectations
And he heard that Jesus would fill him up
Maybe something got lost in the language
If this was full then why bother?

This was not the way it looked on the billboard
Smiling family beaming down on the interstate

You know that we all try to blame someone
When our dreams won’t rise up from their sleep
And the reaching of the steeple felt like one more
Expensive ad for something cheap

This was not the way it looked on the billboard
Smiling family beaming down on the interstate

Dressed up nice for the congregation
Scared somebody's gonna find him out
The din and the clatter of the hallelujahs
Stained glass Jesuses

This was not the way it looked on the billboard
Smiling family beaming down on the interstate

-Caedmon's Call

Puns

...We might almost ask what is to happen to a man who meets a pun. Is he to cut it dead; is he always to pass by on the other side; is he to disown such disreputable company, as of course our refined stylists would do? I am presupposing that he is not out hunting puns or similar monsters; I presuppose that he is walking down the street on some legitimate business of his own. But if the grotesque animal actually comes to meet him, if it stands obviously in his path, I think it is natural for him to take it in his stride.

-G. K. Chesterton, The Well and the Shadows, "An Apology for Buffoons," 17-18.

Literary Criticism

...When the more refined critic implies that my own manner of writing almost makes him die, I think he over-estimates my power over life and death.

-G. K. Chesterton, The Well and the Shadows, "An Apology for Buffoons," 16.

Old Friends

Old friends,
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends.
A newspaper blown though the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends.

Old friends,
Winter companions,
The old men
Lost in their overcoats,
Waiting for the sunset.
The sounds of the city,
Sifting through trees,
Settle like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends.

Can you imagine us
Years from today,
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy.
Old friends,
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears

-Paul Simon

That Still Centre

Here, then, at home, by no more storms distrest,
Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled;
Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled,
Here the sun stands and knows not east nor west,
Here no tide runs; we have come, last and best,
From the wide zone through dizzying circles hurled,
To that still centre where the spinning world
Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.

Lay on thy whips, O Love, that we upright,
Poised on the perilous point, in no lax bed
May sleep, as tension at the verberant core
Of music sleeps; for, if thou spare to smite,
Staggering, we stoop, stooping, fall dumb and dead,
And, dying, so, sleep our sweet sleep no more.

-Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night

Time

One of the great myths of life is that childhood passes quickly. In fact, because time moves more slowly in Kid World—five times more slowly in a classroom on a hot afternoon, eight times more slowly on any car journey of more than five miles (rising to eighty-six times more slowly when driving across Nebraska or Pennsylvania lengthwise), and so slowly during the last week before birthdays, Christmases, and summer vacations as to be functionally immeasurable—it goes on for decades when measured in adult terms. It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.

-Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, 29.

Communion

And may the bread on your tongue
Leave a trail of crumbs
To lead the hungry back to the place that you are from

-Derek Webb, Take to the World

Opportunity Cost

“Although [young people] would agree, if they thought about it, that they will realize only some of the (feasible) possibilities before them, none of these various possibilities is yet excluded in their minds. The young live in each of the futures open to them…Economists speak of the opportunity cost of something as the value of the best alternative foregone for it. For adults, strangely, the opportunity cost of our lives appears to us to be the value of all the foregone alternatives summed together, not merely the best other one. When all the possibilities were yet still before us, it felt as if we would do them all.”

-Robert Nozick, quoted by Alan Jacobs in Books and Culture

Archie

...[Wart] felt a curious sensation at his ear. "Don't jump," said Merlyn, just as he was going to do so, and the Wart sat still. Archimedes, who had been standing forgotten on his shoulder all this time, was gently touching himself against him. His beak was right against the lobe of the ear, which its bristles made to tickle, and suddenly a soft hoarse little voice whispered, "How d'you do," so that it sounded right inside his head.

"Oh, owl!" cried the Wart, forgetting about Merlyn's troubles instantly. "Look, he has decided to talk to me!"

The Wart gently leaned his head against the soft feathers, and the brown owl, taking the rim of his ear in its beak, quickly nibbled right round it with the smallest nibbles.

"I shall call him Archie!" exclaimed the Wart.

"I trust you will do nothing of the sort," cried Merlyn instantly, in a stern and angry voice, and the owl withdrew to the farthest corner of his shoulder.

"Is it wrong?"

"You might as well call me Wol, or Olly," said the owl sourly, "and have done with it."

"Or Bubbles," added the owl in a bitter voice.

-T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone, 39-40.

Not a Bad Pot

"Now breakfast," said Merlyn.

The Wart saw that the most perfect breakfast was laid out neatly for two, on a table before the window. There were peaches. There were also melons, strawberries and cream, rusks, brown trout piping hot, grilled perch which were much nicer, chicken devilled enough to burn one's mouth out, kidneys and mushrooms on toast, fricassee curry, and a choice of boiling coffee or best chocolate made with cream in large cups.

"Have some mustard," said Merlyn, when they had got to the kidneys.

The mustard-pot got up and walked over to his plate on thin silver legs that waddled like the owl's. Then it uncurled its handles and one handle lifted its lid with exaggerated courtesy while the other helped him to a generous spoonful.

"Oh, I love the mustard-pot!" cried the Wart. "Where ever did you get it?"

At this the pot beamed all over its face and began to strut a bit; but Merlyn rapped it on the head with a teaspoon, so that it sat down and shut up at once.

"It's not a bad pot," he said grudgingly. "Only it is inclined to give itself airs."

-T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone, 36-37.

Merlin's Cottage

It was the most marvelous room that the Wart had ever been in.

There was a real corkindrill hanging from the rafters, very lifelike and horrible with glass eyes and scaly tail stretched out behind it. When its master came into the room it winked one eye in salutation, although it was stuffed. There were hundreds of thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped up against each other as if they had had too much spirits to drink and did not really trust themselves. These gave out a smell of must and solid brownness which was most secure. Then there were stuffed birds, popinjays, and maggot-pies and kingfishers, and peacocks with all their feathers but two, and tiny birds like beetles, and a reputed phoenix which smelt of incense and cinnamon. It could not have been a real phoenix, because there is only one of these at a time. Over by the mantelpiece there was a fox's mask, with grafton, buckingham to daventry, 2 hrs 20 mins written under it, and also a forty-pound salmon with awe, 43 min., bulldog written under it, and a very lifelike basilisk with crowhurst otter hounds in Roman print. There were several boar's tusks and the claws of tigers and libbards mounted in symmetrical patterns, and a big head of Ovis Poli, six live grass snakes in a kind of aquarium, some nests of the solitary wasp nicely set up in a glass cylinder, an ordinary beehive whose inhabitants went in and out of the window unmolested, two young hedgehogs in cotton wool, a pair of badgers which immediately began to cry Yik-Yik-Yik-Yik in loud voices as soon as the magician appeared, twenty boxes which contained stick caterpillars and sixths of the puss-moth, and even an oleander that was worth two and six, all feeding on the appropriate leaves, a guncase with all sorts of weapons which would not be invented for half a thousand years, a rod-box ditto, a lovely chest of drawers full of salmon flies which had been tied by Merlyn himself, another chest whose drawers were labeled Mandragora, Mandrake, Old Man's Beard, etc., a bunch of turkey feathers and goose-quills for making pens, an astrolabe, twelve pairs of boots, a dozen purse-nets, three dozen rabbit wires, twelve corkscrews, an ant's nest between two glass plates, ink-bottles of every possible color from red to violet, darning-needles, a gold medal for being the best scholar at Eton, four or five recorders, a nest of field mice all alive-o, two skulls, plenty of cut glass, Venetian glass, Bristol glass and a bottle of Mastic varnish, some satsuma china and some cloisonné, the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (marred as it was by the sensationalism of the popular plates), two paint-boxes (one oil, one water-color), three globes of the known geographical world, a few fossils, the stuffed head of a cameleopard, six pismires, some glass retorts with cauldrons, bunsen burners, etc., and a complete set of cigarette cards depicting wild fowl by Peter Scott.

-T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone, 33-34.

Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 26

Q.
What do you believe when you say: "I believe in God the Father, almighty, maker of heaven and earth"?

A.
That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who out of nothing created heaven and earth
and everything in them,
who still upholds and rules them
by his eternal counsel and providence,
is my God and Father
because of Christ his Son.

I trust him so much that I do not doubt
he will provide
whatever I need
for body and soul,
and he will turn to my good
whatever adversity he sends me
in this sad world.

He is able to do this because he is almighty God;
he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.

Batter My Heart

Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new,
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but, oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend;
But is captive and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you and would be loved fain;
But am betrothed unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

-John Donne

Not Some Stupid Ostentatious House

...And I realized that I was bugged for a metaphorical reason.

Cause I realized that I started to get bugged when I read that little plaque all about Vanderbilt and what he did in the house. He was alone a lot. Awww...I mean, you can just imagine him coming down to breakfast...in his bathrobe, he's got his cornflakes, he's reading his paper.

Now it's one thing to be alone, but sitting at a table that'll seat 350 people, now why rub it in? We get enough of that, right, cause hearts are made that way. We have hearts that are just huge, they'll hold a tremendous amount of fullness. Which is great if there's that much fullness to find, but man, it leaves us a lot of room for empty.

And then I realized, well, relax Dave, because the reason why you're bugged is cause you're worried that your heart is a bad design. It's not. It's not some stupid ostentatious house. It's the design of your heart, come on. There's a lot of fullness to find. Maybe it's only the empty that could keep us looking long enough to find it.

The depth of your dreams
The height of your wishes
The length of your vision to see
The hope of your heart
Is much bigger than this
For it's made out of what might be

So now picture your hope,
Your heart's desire
As a castle that you must keep
In all of its splendor
It's drafty with lonely
This heart is too hard to heat

When I get lonely
Now that's only my sign
That some room is empty in me
And that room is there by design
If I feel hollow
That's just my proof there's more
I need to follow
That's what the lonely is for

-Dave Wilcox, "Metaphorical Reasons" and "That's What the Lonely is For"

Born Into a Romance

The thing which keeps life romantic and full of fiery possibilities is the existence of these great plain limitations which force all of us to meet the things we do not like or do not expect. It is vain for the supercilious moderns to talk of being in uncongenial surroundings. To be in a romance is to be in uncongenial surroundings. To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance.

-G. K. Chesterton, "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family", Heretics

The Supreme Adventure

The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born. This is, indeed, the sublime and special romance of the family. It is romantic because it is a toss-up. It is romantic because it is everything that its enemies call it. It is romantic because it is arbitrary. It is romantic because it is there. So long as you have groups of men chosen rationally, you have some special or sectarian atmosphere. It is when you have groups of men chosen irrationally that you have men. The element of adventure begins to exist; for an adventure is, by its nature, a thing that comes to us. It is a thing that chooses us, not a thing that we choose...The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale. -G. K. Chesterton, "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family", Heretics

Something Resembling Anarchy

...The family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero Restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt against the family, are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is old, like the world. -G. K. Chesterton, "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family", Heretics

Abecedarian Musings

I closed my eyes and thought
about the alphabet,
the letters filing out of the halls of kindergarten

to become literature.
If the British call z zed,
I wondered, why not call b bed and d dead?

And why does z, which looks like
the fastest letter, come at the very end?
unless they are all moving east

when we are facing north in our chairs.

-Billy Collins, "The Long Day"

Fire Alarms

Used to install fire alarms before I ever started to sing
After all these years, I find I've been doing the same thing

-Bill Mallonee, "Opposite's True"

Look, If Someone Wrote a Play...

Look, if someone wrote a play
Just to glorify what's stronger than hate
Would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late?
As if he's almost in defeat
So it's looking like the evil side will win
So on the edge of every seat
From the moment that the whole thing begins

It has been love that mixed the mortar
It was love that stacked these stones
It was love that made this stage here
And made it feel like we're alone
Within some scene set in shadow
Like the night is here to stay
Well, there is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote this play
So that in this darkness love can show the way

-Dave Wilcox, "Show the Way"

The Gospel as Fairy Tale...

And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and of his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he either doesn't believe them or doesn't want them or just doesn't give a damn? In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen. Henry Ward Beecher cheats on his wife, his God, himself, but manages to keep on bringing the Gospel to life for people anyway, maybe even for himself. Lear goes beserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale.

-Frederick Buechner, The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale 7-8.

The Gospel as Comedy...

But [the Gospel] is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy.

-Frederick Buechner, The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, 7.

The Gospel as Tragedy...

The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy.

-Frederick Buechner, The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairytale

Mañana

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

-William Shakespeare, MacBeth

Touché

He told me he's a devout Christian
I told him that sounds a bit redundant

-Ticklepenny Corner, "Band Strikes Up Another Tune"

Superfluous Women

"Miss Climpson," said Lord Peter, "is a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run. Look at electricity. Look at water-power. Look at the tides. Look at the sun. Millions of power units being given off into space every minute. Thousands of old maids, simply bursting with useful energy, forced by our stupid social system into hydros and hotels and communities and hostels and posts as companions, where their magnificent gossip-powers and units of inquisitiveness are allowed to dissipate themselves or even become harmful to the community, while the ratepayers' money is spent on getting work for which these women are providentially fitted, inefficiently carried out by ill-equipped policemen like you. My god! it's enough to make a man write to John Bull. And then bright young men write nasty little patronising books called 'Elderly Women,' and 'On the Edge of the Explosion'—and the drunkards make songs upon 'em, poor things.

"...Just think. People want questions asked. Whom do they send? A man with large flat feet and a notebook—the sort of man whose private life is conducted in a series of inarticulate grunts. I send a lady with a long, woolly jumper on knitting-needles and jingly things round her neck. Of course she asks questions—everyone expects it. Nobody is surprised. Nobody is alarmed. And so called superfluity is agreeably and usefully disposed of. One of these days you will put up a statue to me, with an inscription:

"'To the Man who Made
Thousands of Superfluous Women
Happy
without Injury to their Modesty
or Exertion to Himself.'"

-Dorothy Sayers, Unnatural Death, 25-26.

Choosing an Occupation

Elinor: You talk of feeling idle and useless. Imagine how that is compounded when one has no hope, and no choice of any occupation whatsoever.
Edward: Our circumstances are therefore precisely the same.
Elinor: Except that you will inherit your fortune. We cannot even earn ours.
Edward: Perhaps Margaret is right.
Elinor: Right?
Edward: Piracy is our only option. What is swabbing exactly?

-Sense and Sensibility

A Silly Kind of Face

"I was beginning to have my suspicions," said the doctor, after a short pause. "I think you must be Lord Peter Wimsey. I wondered why your face was so familiar, but of course it was in all the papers a few years ago when you disentangled the Riddlesdale Mystery."

"Quite right. It's a silly kind of face, of course, but rather disarming, don't you think? I don't know that I'd have chosen it, but I do my best with it. I hope it isn't contracting a sleuth-like expression, or anything unpleasant."

-Dorothy Sayers, Unnatural Death, 15-16.

The Heavens Declare the the Glory of God

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their measuring line goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them,
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

-Psalm 19:1-6

Dusk

This Is My Father's World

This is my Father's world, and to my list'ning ears,
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres
This is my Father's world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; his hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world, the birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker's praise.
This is my Father's world: he shines in all that's fair;
In the rustling grass I hear him pass, he speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's world, O let me ne'er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.
This is my Father's world: The battle is not done;
Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and heav'n be one.

-Maltbie D. Babcock

Sunset

It Just Makes You Sick

This was as much as I heard of Mr. Gilmer's cross-examination, because Jem made me take Dill out. For some reason Dill had started crying and couldn't stop; quietly at first, then his sobs were heard by several people in the balcony. Jem said if I didn't go with him he'd make me, and Reverand Sykes said I'd better go, so I went. Dill had seemed to be all right that day, nothing wrong with him, but I guess he hadn't fully recovered from running away.

"Come on out under the trees," I said. "Heat got you, I expect." We chose the fattest live oak and we sat under it.

"It was just him I couldn't stand," Dill said. "That old Mr. Gilmer doin' him thataway, talking so hateful to him—"

"Dill, that's his job. Why, if we didn't have prosecuters—well, we couldn't have defense attorneys, I reckon."

Dill exhaled patiently. "I know all that, Scout. It was the way he said it make me sick, plain sick."

"He's supposed to act that way, Dill, he was cross—"

"He didn't act that way when—"

"Dill, those were his own witnesses."

"Well, Mr. Finch didn't act that way to Mayella and old man Ewell when he cross-examined them. The way that man called him 'boy' all the time and sneered at him, an' looked around at the jury every time he answered—"

"Well, Dill, after all he's just a Negro."

"I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way. Hasn't anybody got any business takin' like that—it just makes me sick."

"That's just Mr. Gilmer's way, Dill, he does 'em all that way. You've never seen him get good'n down on one yet. Why, when—well, today Mr. Gilmer seemed to me like he wasn't half trying. They do 'em all that way, most lawyers, I mean."

"Mr. Finch doesn't."

"He's not an example, Dill, he's—" I was trying to grope in my memory for a sharp phrase of Miss Maudie Atkinson's. I had it: "He's the same in the courtroom as he is on the public streets."

"That's not what I mean," said Dill.

"I know what you mean, boy," said a voice behind us. We thought it came from the tree-trunk, but it belonged to Mr. Dolphus Raymond. He peered around the trunk at us. "You aren't thin-hided, it just makes you sick, doesn't it?"

-Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 226-227.

Disobedience

James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James
Said to his Mother
"Mother," he said, said he:
"You must never go down to the end of the town,
if you don't go down with me."

James James
Morrison's Mother
Put on a golden gown,
James James
Morrison's Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James
Morrison's Mother
Said to herself, said she:
"I can get right down to the end of the town
and be back in time for tea."

King John
Put up a notice,
"LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!
JAMES JAMES
MORRISON'S MOTHER
SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.
LAST SEEN
WANDERING VAGUELY:
QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD,
SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN TO THE END OF THE TOWN—
FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!"

James James
Morrison Morrison
(Commonly known as Jim)
Told his
Other relations
Not to go blaming him.
James James
Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he:
"You must never go down to the end of the town
without consulting me."

James James
Morrison's Mother
Hasn't been heard of since.
King John
Said he was sorry,
So did the Queen and the Prince.
King John
(Somebody told me)
Said to a man he knew:
"If people go down to the end of the town,
well, what can anyone do?"

(Now then, very softly)
J. J.
M. M.
W. G. Du P.
Took great
C/o his M*****
Though he was only 3.
J. J.
Said to his M*****
"M*****," he said, said he:
"You-must-never-go-down-to-the-end-of-the-town-
if-you-don't-go-down-with ME!"

-A. A. Milne, When We Were Very Young

Nothing is Very Strong

Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

...The only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy....Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one— the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

-C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

What Sort of Tale

‘...And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folks of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into?’

-J. R. R. Tolkein, The Two Towers, 696.

Hard to Get

You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened in the hurt
Do you remember when you lived down here
Where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread?
Did you forget about us after you had flown away?
Well I memorized every word you said.
Still I'm so scared I'm holding my breath
While you're up there just playing hard to get.

You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that's not as patient as yours was
Still we do love now and then
Did you ever know loneliness?
Did you ever know need?
Do you remember just how long a night can get
When you are barely holding on and your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in your sweat?
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While you're up there just playing hard to get?

I know you bore our sorrows
I know you feel our pain
And I know that it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained
And I know that I am only lashing out
At the one who loves me most
And after I have figured this all out
What I really need to know is

If you who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time
We can't see what's ahead and we cannot get free
From what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All these words of shame and doubt, blame and regret
I can't see how you're leading me unless you led me here
To where I'm lost enough to let myself be led
And so you've been here all along I guess
It's just your ways, and you are just plain hard to get

-Rich Mullins

Oh Honey, You Somethin' Handsome

At the same time there came down the concourse an old man so gaunt in his jaw as to be toothless, bald and blotched on his skull, meatless arm and thigh. He sat in a wheelchair, listing to the right. The chair was being pushed through the crowds at high speeds by an attendant utterly oblivious of this wispy, thin, and ancient passenger.

The old man's eyes were troubled, but his mouth, sucked inward, was mute. His nose gave him the appearance of a hawk caught in a trap, helpless and resigned.

Now the attendant turned into our gate area, jerked the chair to a stop (bouncing the skeletal soul therein), reached down to set the brake, turned on his heel, and left.

But the brake was not altogether set, nor had the chair altogether stopped. It was creeping by degrees toward the generous hips of the woman whose face was buried in the generous purse of her elder, giggling.

The old man's eyes—the closer he rolled to this red rear end as wide as Texas—widened. He opened his mouth. He began to raise a claw. He croaked. And then he ran straight into the back of her knees.

Yow! Up flew the great purse, vomiting contents. Backward stumbled the young woman, a great disaster descending upon a crushable old man.

At the last instant, she whirled around and caught herself upon the armrests of the wheelchair, a hand to each rest. Her face froze one inch from the face of an astonished octogenarian. They stared at one another, so suddenly and intimately close that they must have felt the heat—each must have smelled the odor of the other.

All at once the woman beamed. "Oh honey!" she cried. "You somethin' handsome, ain't you?" She leaned the last inch forward and kissed him a noisy smack in the center of his bald head. "I didn't hurt you none, did I?"

Strangers were strangers no longer. Suddenly they were something more.

Slowly there spread over the features of this ghostly old man the most beatific smile. Oh, glory and heat and blood and love rose up in a body dried to tinder.

And the young woman burst into thunderous laughter. "Look at you!" she bellowed. "What yo wife gon' say when she see my lipstick kiss on yo head? Ha ha ha!" He reached up to touch the red, and she cried, "You gon' have some explainin' to do!"

That old man closed his eyes in soundless laughter with the woman—two made one for a fleeting moment...

There was a sanctity in the kiss of that woman.

And in this: that the man was as white as the snows of Sweden, and the woman as black as the balmy nights of Africa.

-Walt Wangerin, "Red, Red, the Bloodred Kiss," Little Lamb, Who Made Thee? 169-171.

Conkers

[Nory] liked when things had layers—the earth has layers, the trunk of a tree has layers, the atmosphere has layers. A conker has layers, too. It has a green spiky outer layer and a very shiny wonderful layer which is the conker itself, which is like the finest smoothest wood in a very precious table or the knob of a chair or something like that, in a great palace like Ickworth House, where the floorboards are curved. (They were somehow bent into curves with the help of steam engines, which pleased Littleguy.) And then inside that there's the growing part of the conker, which is like the nerve of the tooth. Sometimes you can find a double-conker. 'Conker' is the English way of saying horse chestnut, and it's a very good way because they can suddenly conk you on the head.

-Nicholson Baker, The Everlasting Story of Nory, 74.

It Is Finished!

"It is finished!" Sinners hear it;
'Tis the dying Victor's cry;
"It is finished!" Angels bear it,
Bear the joyful truth on high:
"It is finished!" Tell it through the earth and sky!
"It is finished!" Tell it through the earth and sky!

Justice, from her awful station,
Bars the sinner's peace no more;
Justice views with approbation
What the Savior did and bore;
Grace and mercy now display their boundless store.
Grace and mercy now display their boundless store.

"It is finished!" All is over;
Yes, the cup of wrath is drained;
Such the truth these words discover;
Thus the vict'ry was obtained;
'Tis a vict'ry none but Jesus could have gained.
'Tis a vict'ry none but Jesus could have gained.

Crown the mighty Conqueror, crown him,
Who his people's foes o'ercame!
In the highest heaven enthrone him!
Men and angels sound his fame!
Great his glory! Jesus bears a matchless name.
Great his glory! Jesus bears a matchless name.

-Thomas Kelly, Gadsby Hymnal #982

Skin the Cat

If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

-G. K. Chesterton, "The Maniac," Orthodoxy, 15.

Politics

Hey man, just play the gig. Never get involved in politics.

-Floyd, Muppet Treasure Island

No Ordinary People

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as your now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare...It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

-C. S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory," The Weight of Glory, 45-46.

O, High King

And you will see faces before this first day is done: each the only one of its kind in the universe, each the face of a high king whose line reaches back unbroken through unnumbered generations, through ancient cities and forgotten battles, past dim, gibbering rain forests to the very beginnings of history itself and beyond, and they will speak to you in words soft and worn from centuries of handling, will say A, B and C to you, E and F and G and H, and will say O to you, O, O, high king to high king as you meet in the mystery of this rainy morning while the cat buries her mess by the broken red wagon and leaves the color of sunrise fall out of the sky.

-Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace, 37-38.

Fortune Cookie

Today, be civil, but don't go out of your way to be over friendly.

-Fortune cookie, courtesy of Sun Sun

What David Remembered

If you think [Peter Pan] was the only baby who ever wanted to escape, it shows how completely you have forgotten your own young days. When David heard this story first he was quite certain that he had never tried to escape, but I told him to think back hard, pressing his hands to his temples, and when he had done this hard, and even harder, he distinctly remembered a youthful desire to return to the tree-tops, and with that memory came others, as that he had lain in bed planning to escape as soon as his mother was asleep, and how she had once caught him half-way up the chimney. All children could have such recollections if they would press their hands hard to their temples, for, having been birds before they were human, they are naturally a little wild during the first few weeks, and very itchy at the shoulders, where their wings used to be. So David tells me.

-J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

Only Fools Burn Away

I stay driven
Cause there's nowhere to park
I can't shut my eyes
I'm afraid of the dark
I lie awake, that stone
Left me chilled to the bone
Sound the alarm before it's done
Find Jim Morrison

Come away to Paris
Let him see another day
Let him fade out slowly
Only fools burn away
Let a true love show him
What a heart can become
Somebody find Jim Morrison
find Jim Morrison's grave

I get weary
Lord, I don't understand
How does a seed get strangled
In the heart of a man?
Then the music covers
Like an evening mist
Like a watch still ticking
On a dead man's wrist
Tick away

-Steve Taylor, "Jim Morrison's Grave"

Camp Songs #8

There was a whale and when she smiled
You could see her teeth for miles and miles
And her tonsils
And her spareribs
And things too fierce to mention

Now what would you do with a whale like that?
Now what would you do if she sat on your hat?
Or your toothbrush?
Or your counselor?
Or anything helpless like that?

Nice But Nubbly

In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth—so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was the small 'Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale's right ear, so as to be out of harm's way. Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, “I'm hungry.” And the small 'Stute Fish said in a small 'stute voice, “Noble and generous Cetacean, have you ever tasted Man?”

“No,” said the Whale. “What is it like?”

“Nice,” said the small 'Stute Fish. “Nice but nubbly.”

-Rudyard Kipling, “How the Whale Got His Throat,” Just So Stories

Jesus Saves

We've explored the patchwork of Americana
The curios and the burger plates
We got a blessing from the Queen of the Highway,
Paid attention to a sign that said "Jesus Saves"

-Terry Scott Taylor, "The Glory Road"

Religious Billboards

Maybe it's not "a belief in the power of brevity" prompting these signs. Maybe it's a panicky recognition that sometimes brevity is all you get: Tell us the meaning of life in no more than two words. If brevity is the soul of wit, perhaps desperation is the soul of brevity.

The people who write apocalyptic or consoling or hortatory messages on their houses and barns, or nail them to their fence posts, might well tell you stories, long stories if they had any opportunity at all to do so. They would weave for you tales of God's wrath or love, and of how their lives were transformed by the very knowledge that they now are pleased to share with you.

But they never get that chance. So they shout at us and draw large startling figures for us as we speed by. The writers stay put, or at least their signs do, while we zoom through town, nearly unrecognizable blurs who may not have sense enough to ask the only question that really matters: What must I do to be saved?

-Alan Jacobs, "Reading the Signs," First Things 176 (Oct. 2007), 25-28.

To the Hard of Hearing You Shout

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large startling figures.

-Flannery O'Connor, "The Fiction Writer & His Country," Mystery and Manners, 33-34.

St. Supercilia

St. Supercilia, born in Paris about the year 1400, was a maiden of remarkable erudition, who steadfastly refused to marry anyone who could not defeat her in open disputation. When the best scholars of all the universities in Europe had tried and failed, her unworthy father brutally commanded her to accept the hand of a man who, though virtuous, sensible, and of a good estate, knew only six languages and was weak in mathematics. At this, the outraged saint raised her eyebrows so high that they lifted her off her feet and out through a top-story window, whence she was last seen floating away in a northerly direction.

St. Supercilia is the patron of pedants. Her feast, Eyebrow Sunday, falls in Cacophony, between Lowbrow Sunday and Derogation Day.

-Dorothy Sayers, "Selections from The Pantheon Papers," The Whimsical Christian, 5-6.

Long on Diagnosis, Short on Cure

Now they were awful good at triage, that's for sure
But they were long on diagnosis and short on cure

-Don Chaffer

Man's Best Friend

Every boy should have a chicken.

-Daniel Pinkwater, The Hoboken Chicken Emergency

Saying Grace

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts—a grace before Milton—a grace before Shakespeare—a devotional exercise—proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen?

-Charles Lamb, "Grace Before Meat," Essays of Elia and Last Essays

Non Sequitur

“I understand that you are planning to enter the ministry. Is this your own idea, or have you been poorly advised?”

- Frederick Buechner (quoting a hostess), The Alphabet of Grace

The Voice in the Dark Room

“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice.
And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.
“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to have heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.”
Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable phrase.
“I really have no experience,” he began.
“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle of Armageddon.”
“But I am really unfit--”
“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown.
“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don't know of any profession of which mere willingness is the final test.”
“I do,” said the other--“martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good-day.”

-G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

If I Stand

If I stand let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can't, let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You
And if I sing let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs
And if I weep let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home

-Rich Mullins

Marginalia

I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

-Billy Collins, from the poem "Marginalia"

Inscriptions On Flyleaves

I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages some one long ago has called my attention to.

-Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

Not Enough

"'Jim Morrison's Grave' asks the age-old question: Does artistry justify being a weasel?...Morrison left the world some intriguing music. As far as I'm concerned, that's not enough." -Steve Taylor

Vandalism of Shalom

...Shalom is God's design for creation and redemption; sin is blamable human vandalism of these great realities and therefore an affront to their architect and builder.

-Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It's Supposed to Be

Confession

I once bought a magic marker
The kind with permanent ink
I wrote down all my bad thoughts
I got ‘em all I think
In every bathroom stall
On every vacant wall
Highly classified information
Yeah I exposed it all

-Bill Mallonee, "Tokyo Rose"

Eeyore Finds the Wolery

So, in a little while, they came to the house which Eeyore had found, and for some minutes before they came to it, Piglet was nudging Pooh, and Pooh was nudging Piglet, and they were saying, “It is!” and “It can't be!” and “It is, really!” to each other.
And when they got there, it really was.
“There!” said Eeyore proudly, stopping them outside Piglet's house. “And the name on it, and everything!”
“Oh!” cried Christopher Robin, wondering whether to laugh or what.
“Just the house for Owl. Don't you think so, little Piglet?”
And then Piglet did a Noble Thing, and he did it in a sort of dream, while he was thinking of all the wonderful words Pooh had hummed about him.
“Yes, it's just the house for Owl,” he said grandly. “And I hope he'll be very happy in it.” And then he gulped twice, because he had been very happy in it himself.
“What do you think, Christopher Robin?” asked Eeyore a little anxiously, feeling that something wasn't quite right.
Christopher Robin had a question to ask first, and he was wondering how to ask it.
“Well,” he said at last, “it's a very nice house, and if your own house is blown down, you must go somewhere else, mustn't you Piglet? What would you do, if your house was blown down?”
Before Piglet could think, Pooh answered for him.
“He'd come and live with me,” said Pooh, “wouldn't you, Piglet?”
Piglet squeezed his paw.
“Thank you, Pooh,” he said, “I should love to.”

-A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

Clichés

Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.

-Umberto Eco, quoted by Alan Jacobs in Books and Culture

The Merchant of Venice (Abridged)

Bassanio's a noble who needs lots of lolly
To woo his fair Portia, a very rich dolly.
He fingers his buddy, Antonio, for ducats,
So Tony then chats up a chap who has buckets:
Shylock the usurer, Merchant of Venice
(Who's locally reckoned a bit of a menace).
Shylock says: 'Okay, I'll lend you a stack
--For a pound of your flesh, if I don't get it back!'
Bassanio gets rich. A party game's played:
Bassanio wins Portia (his pal gets her maid).
Tony's fleet's wrecked; old Shylock now pounces,
And stakes out his claim for T.'s sixteen ounces.
Portia's the lawyer (she's dressed as a man);
Bassanio's fooled (believe that if you can!).
'No flesh without blood!' the Duke's Court decrees,
So Shylock is screwed by a neat legal wheeze.
They grab all his riches (but spare him his fate):
Half goes to Tony and half to the State.
'Convert!' says Antonio. 'And then all your bread
Will go to your daughter when you are dead!'
(Shylock's young daughter has married a goy,
Instead of the right kind of nice Jewish boy.)
Shylock's persuaded. All ends well, in short,
And T.'s battered boats come safely to port.

-Ron Rubin, from How to Become Ridiculously Well-Read in One Evening

Perforation

Perforation! Shout it out! The deliberate punctuated weakening of paper and cardboard so that it will tear along an intended path, leaving a row of fine-haired white pills or tuftlets on each new edge! It is a staggering conception, showing an age-transforming feel for the unique properties of pulped wood fiber. Yet do we have national holidays to celebrate its development? Are festschrift volumes published honoring the dead greats in the field? People watch the news every night like robots, thinking they are learning about their lives, never paying attention to the far more immediate developments that arrive unreported, on the zip-lock perforated top of the ice cream carton, in reply coupons bound in magazines and on the "Please Return This Portion" edging of bill stubs, on sheets of postage stamps and sheets of Publishers Clearing House magazine stamps, on paper towels, in rolls of plastic bags for produce at the supermarket, in strips of hanging file-folder labels. ...Why don't I have any clear idea even now, after years of schooling, how the perforation of the reply coupon or the roll of toilet paper is accomplished? My guesses are pitiable! Circular pizza cutters with diamond tipped radii? Zirconium templates, fatally sharp to the touch, stamping paper with their barbed braillery? Why isn't the pioneer of perforation chiseled into the facades of libraries, along with Locke, Franklin, and the standard bunch of French Encyclopedists? They would have loved him! They would have devoted a whole page of beautifully engraved illustration, with "fig. 1's" and "fig. 2's," to the art.

-Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine

Optimism

We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glow-worm.

-Winston Churchill

Our Hearts Are Restless Until They Rest in Thee

“Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is thy power, and infinite is thy wisdom.” And man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.

-Saint Augustine, Confessions

Restless

God did not lead me here to abandon me
He did not leave me to drown in my own tears
The day is darker now, I can barely see
The road is longer, and the stones hurt my feet

I have sung my songs of mirth
I have hung head and cried
You have been ever faithful
I’m the one that left your side

All the days I have wasted
Chasing down the winds of empty praise
And all the times I have lost
Searching for riches in abandoned mines

My heart is restless
It finds no peace
I was made for you

I have bargained with my future
I have wrestled with my past
Like a drunk man trying to be sober
Every day I face the empty glass

My heart is restless
It finds no peace
I was made for you

I am restless, oh so restless
Until I come to rest in you

Some days my faith is a mighty river
Some days my faith is a barren land
Oh lord please tell me why
Maybe then I would understand

My heart is restless
It finds no peace
My heart is restless
It finds no peace
I was made for you

-Brooks Williams

(Carrion Comfort)

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? Lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trod
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? Is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

Harder To Believe Than Not To

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.

-Flannery O'Connor

Losing Your Faith in College

To Alfred Corn, 30 May '62

I think that this experience you are having of losing your faith, or as you think, of having lost it, is an experience that in the long run belongs to faith...I don't know how the kind of faith required of a Christian living in the 20th century can be at all if it is not grounded on this experience that you are having right now of unbelief...

As a freshman in college you are bombarded with new ideas...After a year of this, you think you cannot believe. You are just beginning to realize how difficult it is to have faith and the measure of a commitment to it, but you are too young to decide you don't have faith just because you feel you can't believe. About the only way we know whether we believe or not is by what we do, and I think from your letter that you will not take the path of least resistance in this matter and simply decide that you have lost your faith and that there is nothing you can do about it.

One result of the stimulation of your intellectual life that takes place in college is usually a shrinking of the imaginative life...The intellectual difficulties have to be met, however, and you will be meeting them for the rest of your life...If you want your faith, you have to work for it. It is a gift, but for very few is it a gift given without any demand for equal time devoted to its cultivation. For every book you read that is anti-Christian, make it your business to read one that presents the other side of the picture.

-Flannery O'Connor

London in the Blitz

[An excerpt from a letter written by Honoria Lucasta, Dowager Duchess of Denver, to an American friend, 12th November, 1939:]

...You can't think how queer Piccadilly Circus looks with Eros gone and a sort of pyramid like King Cheops on a small scale built up over the fountain--though why they should take all that trouble I can't think; unless it's the water-mains, except that people feel very sentimental about it and if anyone dropped a bomb on it they'd feel the heart of Empire had stopped beating. Peter says we ought to do something constructive in the opposite direction and floodlight the Albert Memorial because the park would be better without it, but poor Queen Victoria would turn in her grave and, as I reminded him, he didn't know Queen Victoria personally: I did.

-Dorothy Sayers, The Wimsey Papers