#815 city hall in red
Month: February 2019
There was a child named Bernadette…
Antonio Machado ~ “…wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.”
Paris alley
Photo: Paris, France – February 2007
Remember those earlier days…
32 Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. 33 Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. 34 You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. 35 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.
36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. 37 For,
“In just a little while,
he who is coming will come
and will not delay.”[a]
38 And,
“But my righteous[b] one will live by faith.
And I take no pleasure
in the one who shrinks back.”[c]
39 But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.
– 1 Hebrews 32:10-39
Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. — William Saroyan
Living simply like St. Francis of Assisi
community
if you offer
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
– Isaiah 58:10
Photo: Prout’s Neck, Maine – November 2016
The strength of the cold
The strength of the cold, the austerity and power of the landscape, redeems the snow colors and delicate shadows from anything of pastel shading. I can think of no art that has rendered with such things adequately – the nineteenth-century realists were so realistic as to be totally unlike what they painted. There is such a thing as too close a resemblance. In a way, nothing resembles reality less than the average photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial, you have to use a sign, which is itself substantial and exists in its own right.
Man is the image of God and not the shadow of God. – Thomas Merton, Journal entry, February 17, 1958
Photo: Portland, Maine – February 5, 2019
give it, give it all, give it now
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. Annie Dillard, from The Writing Life
Edge of Atlantic 