Unpolluted Eyes

only words

Sat, 11 Jun 2005 15:57:31 GMT

I would rather live out in the desert alone, like an old prospector. All I needed was a small water source. What was the point in such loneliness among people. At least if you were by yourself, you had a good reason to be lonely.

...

Prostitute. Whore. What did they really mean anyway? Only words. Words trailing their streamers of judgement.

...

How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth were bad, its hair gray and unkempt. While beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in prayer.

...

I would never claim to know what women in prison dreamed about, or the rights of beauty, or what the night's magic held. If I thought for a second I did, I'd never have the chance to find out, to see it whole, to watch it emerge and reveal itself. I don't have to put my face on every cloud, be the protagonist of every random event.

--Janet Fitch, White Oleander

the comfort of a rhetorical question

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 16:43:01 GMT

If I were a poet, that's what I'd write about. People who worked in the middle of the night. Men who loaded trains, emergengy coom nurses with their gentle hands. Night clerks in hotels, cabdrivers on graveyard, waitresses in all-night coffee shops. They knew the world, how precious it was when a person remembered your name, the comfort of a rhetorical question, "How's it going, how's the kids?" They knew how long th enight was. They knew the sound life made as it left. It rattled, like a slamming screen door in the wind. Night workers lived without illusions, they wiped dreams off counters, they loaded freight. They headed back to the airport for one last fare.

--Janet Fitch, White Oleander

something you can use, sculpt, wield

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 15:46:16 GMT

"Isn't it funny. I'm enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is tempermental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you. Changes its mind. But hatred, now. That's something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It's hard or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but hatred cradles you. It's so soothing. I feel infinitely better now."

--Janet Finch, White Oleander

makes you feel detached from the earth

Wed, 18 May 2005 04:37:23 GMT

The trip had been the sort that people refer to as "endless." The depressed person wants trips to be literally endless, because as long as she is in transit from one point to another, her worries, her despair, are removed from where they originated...and where they will inevitably resume. Under the circumstances, what could be better than being in a soft reclining chair in a spaceship with strangers, a spaceship in that it moves fast and makes you feel detached from the earth (way up here in this chair) as you behold, from behind big sheets of thick plate glass so darkly tinted that no one outside can even see you, blissfully alien landscapes drifting bye...Please, God, let it last forever -- or else come take me away in the night.

--Tom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons

till they carve a single course

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 20:40:06 GMT

Praise the source of faith and learning who has sparked and stoked the mind
With a passion for discerning how the world has been designed.
Let the sense of wonder flowing from the wonders we survey
Keep our faith forever growing and renew our need to pray:

God of wisdom, we acknowledge that our science and our art
And the breadth of human knowledge only partial truth impart.
Far beyond our calculation lies a depth we cannot sound
Where your purpose for creation and the pulse of life are found.

May our faith redeem the blinder of believing that our thought
Has displaced the grounds for wonder which the ancient prophets taught.
May our learning curb the error which unthinking faith can breed
Lest we justify some terror with the antiquated creed.

As two currents in a river fight each other's undertow
Till converging they deliver one coherent steady flow,
May we blend our faith and learning till they carve a single course
And our seeking and our yearning join in praising you their source:

Praise for minds to probe the heavens, praise for strength to breathe the air,
Praise for all the beauty leavens, praise for silence, music, prayer,
Praise for justice and compassion and for strangers, neighbors, friends,
Praise for hearts and lips to fashion, praise for love that never ends.

--Thomas H. Troeger

a link

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:55:30 GMT

In our age, being largely catastrophic?running without pause from the Armenian genocide that opened the twentieth century through the Jewish Holocaust and the terror famine of Ukraine to Cambodia, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and so many others right up to the current crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan?trauma itself may provide a link between cultures.

-Benjamin Thomas

act

Mon, 14 Mar 2005 01:23:55 GMT

"Literature acts on the world by acting on its readers"

--Schweikert

slow dance

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 04:52:22 GMT

"There is a slow dance in my heart I fear I may never do. And that would be a pity."

~IrishRed

i'd try to have nothing else. just moments.

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 06:05:13 GMT

If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been on this trip. I know of very few things I would take seriously. I would be crazier. I would be less hygienic. I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets. I would burn more gasoline. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would have more actual trouble and fewer imaginary ones. You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day by day. Oh, I have had my moments. And, if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another. Instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I have been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a gargle, a raincoat, and a parachute. If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things. And travel lighter than I have, If I had my life to live over, I would start going barefoot earlier in the spring. And stay that way later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I wouldn't make such good grades except by accident. I would ride merry-go-rounds. I'd pick more daisies.

know that they live in babylon

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 22:00:09 GMT

"...if the Christian faith is to be one that challenges the modern world, then it must accept a certain alienation from dominant culture and its religious traditions of dominance.

"To read the book of Daniel in one hand while holding Fanon or modern Native American works in the other is to suggest that biblical faith will of necessity find significant social and spiritual parallels with the life of alienated peoples. This is because Christians know that they live in Babylon and not in the kingdom of God. To come to that realization means embracing a theology of Christ against culture, particularly when that culture is based on the products of military conquest and economic abuse of conquered peoples."

--Daneil L. Smith-Christopher

a broken-winged bird'

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 21:55:25 GMT

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow

Langston Hughes

like philosophy, like art

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 21:41:44 GMT

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

~C.S. Lewis

solid, massive, secure

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 02:47:32 GMT

"The Christian life is going to God. In going to God Christians travel the same ground that everyone else walks on, breathe the same air, drink the same water, shop in the same stores, read the same newspapers, are citizens under the same governments, pay the same prices for groceries and gasoline, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures, get the same distresses, are buried in the same ground.

"The difference is that each step we walke, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God; and therfore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will guard us from every evil, he guards our very life.

"...Faith is not a precarious affair of chance escape from satanic assaults. It is the solid, massive, secure experience of God, who keeps all evil from getting inside us, who guards our life, who guards us when we leave and when we return, who guards us now, who guards us always."

--Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

must sing

Fri, 04 Feb 2005 07:29:16 GMT

You turned my mourning into dancing again, you lifted my sorrow. I can't stay silent, I must sing for your love is good.

let go the bar

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 07:23:51 GMT

"...between the time we leave home and arrive at our destination; between the time we leave adolescence and arrive at adulthood; between the time we leave doubt and arrive at faith. It is like the time when a trapeze artist lets go the bar and hangs in midair, ready to catch another support; it is a time of danger, of expectation, of uncertainty, of excitement, of extraordinary aliveness."

--Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

my soul more bent to serve

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 16:40:26 GMT

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man?s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o?er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

--John Milton

not a mite would I withhold

Sat, 22 Jan 2005 22:56:40 GMT

Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my voice, and let me sing always, only, for my King.
Take my lips, and let them be filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect, and use every power as Thou shalt choose.

Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.

i did something

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 23:15:53 GMT

Don't merely "live" or you're taking up space. Don't live as if you will never die. Don't live your life so that when you do it's as though you've never lived. Live in a way that you can look back on your life and say, "Holy cow! I did all of that?! I did something with my life. I. made. a. difference." No wonder so many people have anxieties about dying. They haven't lived yet! Think. Go. Live. Be.

--Tina Segram

far more marvelous is the truth

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 05:07:55 GMT

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere globes of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere.' I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the 'why?' It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"

- Richard P. Feynman

Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 08:01:19 GMT

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! Im fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help Ive come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily Im constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Heres my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How Ill sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day

lest there not be enough ocean

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 15:46:03 GMT

With what misgivings we turn over our lives to God, imagining somehow that we are about to lose everything that matters. Our hesitancy is like that of a tiny shell on the seashore, afraid to give up the teaspoonful of water it holds lest there not be enough ocean to fill it up again.

-Elisabeth Elliot

so that not one little piece is ever lost

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:19:32 GMT

Dear God, let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be happy; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be wram. Let me be hungry; let me have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere -- be decietful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

--Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

aegean, mediterranean, adriatic, corsica, sicily, crete

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 02:14:35 GMT

We trace the nearly-invisble rivers and autoroutes with our fingers, stopping at cities the size of salt-crystals, mountain ranges the size of peppercorns. The map is so paper-thin that we can feel the pebbled texture of the wall behind it, feel it flutter with our breath as we murmur to each other. Words like aegean, mediterranean, adriatic. corsica, sicily, crete.
We whisper their names furtively, as if it were a crime that our fingertips meet as we point them out, one by one.

--verbalsuperstar

whenas death shall all the word subdue, our love shall live

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 17:07:51 GMT

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

--Edmund Spenser

so easily misunderstood in comparison

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 06:50:43 GMT

"People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. These too seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the sould with a thousand things better than words."

--Felix Mendelssohn