Very Lucky

If I die tonight, and I don’t see why I should, I shall have been sorry to have missed the finish, but I shall still count myself very lucky to have seen so much... What a period! What an age to have been alive in! Oh, thank God I was born when I was.

-Margery Allingham, The Oaken Heart, 307-308

Who?

And suddenly she was struck by a thought as blinding as a flash of lightning. Who had bought the clothes? Who had bought the furniture, some of it new and some of it so old? Who had arranged all the lovely things in her bedroom? Who had arranged all the things in the other rooms, thinking it all out so carefully so that all her wishes were granted at every point? Who had built the house? Who had planted the garden? Who had made the earth upon which the house stood and in which the flowers bloomed? Who had set the woods about her house, with the wild birds singing in the trees? Who had arched the sky over it, with the sun to give her light by day and the moon and stars by night? Who had--?

-Elizabeth Goudge, Henrietta's House, 149.

Morning

But what is truly strange is that I never liked mornings when I could have them with real sunrises and real dew on real roses and real paperboys wrecking real bicycles on the sidewalk outside my window. How I could ever have remained asleep and voluntarily missed a sunrise, I can't explain.

 

-N. D. Wilson, Leepike Ridge, 141.

Evening

Here dies another day,
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?

-G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Douglas Wilson in "Thanks for the Thanks", May/June 2011 issue of Books and Culture

The Line of Succession

"I mean you're a man indebted to a dead man. So am I. So was he. That's the story of it. Back of you is Jack Beechum. Back of him was Ben Feltner. Back of him was, I think, his own daddy. And back of him was somebody else, and on back that way, who knows how far? And I'm back of you because Jack Beechum is, and because he's back of me, along with some others. It's no use to want to make it on your own, because you can't..."

Elton laughs. "The line of succession I'm in says you've got to make it on your own. I'm in the line of succession of root, hog, or die."

"That may have been the line of succession you were in, but it's not the one you're in now. The one you're in now is different."

"Well, how did I get in it?" Elton says almost in a sigh, as if longing to be out of it.

"The way you got in it, I guess, was by being chosen. The way you stay in it is by choice."

-Wendell Berry, That Distant Land, 284.

A Life Well Lived

The great question for the old and dying, I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful enough for love received and given, however much. No one who has gratitude is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last.

-Wendell Berry, Andy Catlett, 120.