Compensations
In the last year I’ve been losing my words, evidenced at this site by my almost exclusive posts of one-liners by others (mostly by the saints and mystics). Rather than kvetch about this diminishment (…
Today’s One-Liner (#343)
For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy. –Saint Thérèse of Lisieux,…
The Mystery of Memory
Nature sometimes joins her effects and her appearances to our acts with a sort of serious and intelligent appropriateness, as if she would compel us to reflect. For nearly a half hour a great cloud…
Tears Every Time
Thank you, Andrew Ivers, for sending this to me again!
Lately
In recent weeks, I am grateful for being able to learn from Elica Le Bon and Insurrection Barbie at X.
Compelling
His voice was deep and resonant and somehow brave, like the voice of old-time American heroes and orators. Something earnest and strong and humanly hopeful I liked about him, while the other poets were either…
Without Judging
To underline: the moral crusader filled with righteous indignation proceeds obsessively, not calmly or with clarity; and his efforts are sterile, ineffective, undermined by his own lack of self-awareness. Only contemplative attention that reflects things…
Today’s One-Liner (#342)
Believe me–to write books of piety, to compose sublime poems, all this is not worth as much as the smallest act of renunciation. –Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, in Francis Broome, The Little Way for Every…
Four or Five Times in Life
“He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It…
House of Hospitality
Every time he said this word monsieur, with his gently solemn, and heartily hospitable voice, the man’s countenance lighted up. Monsieur to a convict, is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst…