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

The Democratic Contention

The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analagous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analagous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.

-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Be With You

And when my body lies in the ruins
Of the lies that nearly ruined me
Will You pick up the pieces
That were pure and true
And breathe Your life into them
And set them free

And when You blast this cosmos
To kingdom come
When those jagged-edged mountains
I love are gone
When the sky is crossed with the tears
Of a thousand falling suns
As they crash into the sea
Can I be with you
Can I be with you

-Rich Mullins

A Song of Paradise

SING a song of Paradise
Far above the skies—
Four-and-twenty Elders
And Monsters full of eyes!
Heaven’s gates are opened,
They all begin to sing,
Playing ball with golden crowns
Round about the King.

The King is in His counting-house,
Counting His elect,
The Queen comes from her chamber
Royally bedecked
With chrysoprase and amethyst
And jacinth without price…
Now is not this a pretty song
To sing of Paradise?

-Dorothy Sayers

To State the Obvious

Taking as divine inspiration, as a flash of originality, something that is obvious reveals a certain freshness of spirit, an enthusiasm for life and its unpredictability, a love of ideas--small as they may be. I will always remember my first meeting with that great man Erving Goffman, whom I admired and loved for the genius and penetration with which he could identify infinitesimal aspects of behavior that had previously eluded everyone else. We were sitting at an outdoor cafe when, looking at the street after a while, he said, "You know something? I believe there are too many automobiles in circulation in our cities." Maybe he had never thought this before because he had had far more important things to think about; he had just had a sudden epiphany and still had the mental freshness to express it...

-Umberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays

Be Thou My Vision

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, and I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High king of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

High king of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O ruler of all.

Two's Company...

Lamb says somewhere that if, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but "A's part in C," while C loses not only A but "A's part in B." In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his faces. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him "to myself" now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth...

-C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Not Entirely Beautful

Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful

-W. B. Yeats, "A Prayer for My Daughter" (Quoted by Buechner in Telling Secrets)

Il Faut Souffrir Pour Etre Belle

To be born as blonde and blue-eyed and beautiful as [my mother] was can be as much of a handicap in its way as to be born with a cleft palate because if you are beautiful enough you don't really have to make people love you and want to be near you. You don't have to be particularly kind or unselfish or generous or compassionate because people will flock around you anyway simply for the sake of your beaux yeux.

-Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

Raisins

They used to be fat and juicy and now they're twisted. They had their lives stolen. Well, they taste sweet, but really they're just humiliated grapes. I can't say I am a big supporter of the raisin council.

-Benny & Joon

What Susan Said

Two lonely-eyed boys in a pick-up truck
And they're drivin' through the rain and the heat
And their skin's so sweaty they both get stuck
To the old black vinyl seats
And it's Abbott and Costello meet Paul and Silas
It's the two of us together and we're puttin' on the mileage

And we both feel lost
But I remember what Susan said
How love is found in the things we've given up
More than in the things that we have kept
And ain't it funny what people say
And ain't it funny what people write
And ain't it funny how it hits you so hard
In the middle of the night
And if your home is just another place where you're a stranger
And far away is just somewhere you've never been
I hope that you'll remember, I was your friend

Two full grown men in a huddle of kids
And they're trying to help them to believe
What is too good to be real
But is more real than the air they breathe
And it's Wally and the Beaver, David and Jonathan
It's the Love of Jesus puttin' on flesh and bone

(Repeat chorus)

-Rich Mullins

Hebrews 11:13-14

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

Strangers and Aliens

We weren't born yesterday. We are from Missouri.

But we are also from somewhere else. We are from Oz, from Looking-Glass Land, from Narnia, and from Middle Earth. If with part of ourselves we are men and women of the world and share the sad unbeliefs of the world, with a deeper part still, the part where our best dreams come from, it is as if we were indeed born yesterday, or almost yesterday, because we are also all of us children still...

-Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale

What is it you do, Mr. Dowd?

Well Harvey and I sit in the bars, and have a drink or two, play the juke box. And soon the faces of all the other people, they turn toward mine and they smile. And they’re saying, “We don’t know your name, mister, but you’re a very nice fella.”

Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We’ve entered as strangers. Soon we have friends. And they come over and they sit with us, and they drink with us, and they talk to us. They tell about the big, terrible things they’ve done, and the wonderful things they’ll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar.

And then, I introduce them to Harvey. And he’s bigger and grander than anything they offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed.

The same people seldom come back. But that’s envy my dear. There’s a little bit of envy in the best of us. That’s too bad, isn’t it.

-Mary Chase, Harvey

My Friends

My friends ain't the way I wish they were, they are just the way they are.

-Rich Mullins, "Brother's Keeper"

Christian Community

The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams...Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

The Game of Questions

R: We could play at questions.
G: What good would that do?
R: Practice!
G: Statement! One—love.
R: Cheating!
G: How?
R: I hadn’t started yet.
G: Statement. Two—love.
R: Are you counting that?
G: What?
R: Are you counting that?
G: Foul! No repetitions. Three—love. First game to…
R: I’m not going to play if you’re going to be like that.
G: Whose serve?
R: Hah?
G: Foul! No grunts. Love—one.
R: Whose go?
G: Why?
R: Why not?
G: What for?
R: Foul! No synonyms. One—all.
G: What in God’s name is going on?
R: Foul! No rhetoric. Two—one.
G: What does it all add up to?
R: Can’t you guess?
G: Were you addressing me?
R: Is there anyone else?
G: Who?
R: How would I know?
G: Why do you ask?
R: Are you serious?
G: Was that rhetoric?
R: No.
G: Statement! Two—all. Game point.
R: What’s the matter with you today?
G: When?
R: What?
G: Are you deaf?
R: Am I dead?
G: Yes or no?
R: Is there a choice?
G: Is there a God?
R: Foul! No non sequiturs, three—two, one game all.
G (seriously): What’s your name?
R: What’s yours?
G: I asked you first.
R: Statement. One—love.
G: What’s your name when you’re at home?
R: What’s yours?
G: When I’m at home?
R: Is it different at home?
G: What home?
R: Haven’t you got one?
G: Why do you ask?
R: What are you driving at?
G (with emphasis): What’s your name?!
R: Repetition. Two—love. Match point to me.
G (seizing him violently): WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
R: Rhetoric! Game and match!

-Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Making Friends

I already know an awful lot of people, and until one of them dies I couldn't possibly meet anyone else.

-Regina Lampert (played by Audrey Hepburn) in Charade

Good Manners

Curtsy while you're thinking what to say, it saves time.

-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Incarnational Art

The Manicheans separated spirit and matter. To them all material things were evil. They sought pure spirit and tried to approach the infinite directly without any mediation of matter. This is also pretty much the modern spirit, and for the sensibility infected with it, fiction is hard if not impossible to write because fiction is so very much an incarnational art.

One of the most common and saddest spectacles is that of a person of really fine sensibility and acute psychological perception trying to write fiction by using these qualities alone. This type of writer will put down one intensely emotional or keenly perceptive sentence after the other, and the result will be complete dullness. The fact is that the materials of the fiction writer are the humblest. Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.

-Flannery O'Connor, "The Nature and Aim of Fiction"

Freaks

Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.

-Flannery O'Connor, "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction"

Rot

In the introduction to a collection of his stories called Rotting Hill, Wyndham Lewis has written, "If I write about a hill that is rotting, it is because I despise rot." The general accusation passed against writers now is that they write about rot because they love it. Some do, and their works may betray them, but it is impossible not to believe that some write about rot because they see it and recognize it for what it is.

-Flannery O'Connor, "The Fiction Writer and His Country"

More Common Sense

Whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it's going to be bad for the pitcher.

-Sancho Panza, The Man of La Mancha

Common Sense

One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come along and she was carrying a basket of food. "Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother?" asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood.

When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.

Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.

-James Thurber, "The Little Girl and the Wolf"

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

-Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room

Untitled

As years come in and years go out
I totter toward the tomb,
Still caring less and less about
Who goes to bed with whom.

-Dorothy Sayers

Interior Design and Backhoes

Let me now share with you something about which I changed my mind. Once I was riding the bus between New York City and Rochester. At the Binghamton stop, the driver noticed a shoe sitting on the ledge below the front windshield. The sight of it bothered him. He held it up to us and said, "Is this anybody's?" There was no response, so he left the bus for a moment and threw the shoe in a nearby trash can. We drove on toward Rochester. Idle, I became caught up in a little plan to furnish my future apartment: I would buy yellow forklifts and orange backhoes, rows of them, upholstered so that my guests might sit if they wished in the scoops or on the slings slung between the forks. I had begun to calculate how many forklifts a typical floor would sustain when a man with disorderly hair walked to the front of the bus wearing two socks and one shoe. "Did you by any chance see a shoe?" he asked the driver. The driver said: "I asked about that shoe in Binghamton. It's gone now." The man apologized for having been asleep and returned to his seat.

Since that bus trip, five years ago, I find that, without my knowledge, I have changed my mind. I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes. Somewhere I jettisoned that interest as irrevocably as the bus driver tossed out the strange sad man's right shoe. Yet I did not experience during the intervening time a single uncertainty or pensive moment in regard to a backhoe. Five years of walking around cities, flipping through seed catalogs, and saying "Oho!" to statements I disagreed with--the effect of which has been to leave me with a disinclination to apply heavy machinery to interior design.

-Nicholson Baker, The Size of Thoughts

The Duchess' Song

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes;
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.

CHORUS:
Wow! wow! wow!

I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes;
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!

-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Forgiveness

Reward all who have done us good, and pardon all those who have done or wish us evil, and give them repentance and better minds.

-Book of Common Prayer, 1892 Edition