Checkered Reality

Reality is not always what it seems to be.


About Me  


At every age is the tendency to regard oneself as wise and mature, but sometimes in a moment of clarity I see how young and unwise I really am, and it is severely humbling.  Then I snap back into my regular delusions of wisdom and maturity.



Wine Before Breakfast…

            … the one bright spot of my week.

Everyone’s wearing jackets but me
Everyone’s holding parasols, whistling
Everyone’s wearing jackets but me
I’m feeling melancholy
Melancholy

Everyone’s got a bicycle but me
Cruising down the avenue
Like feathers on the sea
Everyone’s got a bicycle but me
It’s all unsettling
Unsettling

- Elizabeth and the Catapult, “Rainiest Day of Summer”



“ The higher Christian churches—where, if anywhere, I belong—come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.
/ Annie Dillard, “Holy the Firm”


Grief

What a cruel world

where one is punished for loving

the deeper the love

the deeper the pain

Even for God.

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

- Mumford & Sons, “After the Storm”




“ Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, “Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.” A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
/ C. S. Lewis, “Till We Have Faces”


I desire to be more intentional about my faith.  Now to translate desire into action.



“ the deflated pillow is having a hard time re-flating.


BBC News - Taiwan dog poo lottery proves a 'big success'

The city simply cannot afford to keep exchanging dog poo for gold.



“ Long, tiring, somewhat downer day… but friends at the end make it all worthwhile.