We cannot assert that someone who is well behaved, devout, and virtuous in ordinary life, is also already certain of surviving the great situations where it is a question of life or death. The grace of such endurance is a grace that no one can merit by good behavior in ordinary life. But ordinary life is indeed the way in which we must remain ready for the decisive situations; it can be the way in which God wants to give us the very grace—which we cannot demand—of surviving the great hours of our life. We must be faithful in little things in order to be permitted to hope that God in his grace will also send us faithfulness in great things. – Karl Rahner, Words of Faith
Uncategorized
Live generously…
“This will prove that you are sons and daughters of your heavenly Father, for his sun rises on the bad and the good, he rains on the just and the unjust alike…. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God does toward you.” Matthew 5:45-48
When a man’s self is hidden…
When a man’s self is hidden from everybody else . . . it seems also to become hidden even from himself, and it permits disease and death to gnaw into his substance without his clear knowledge. — Sidney Jourard
High Shelf Press
My poem and drawings are now up on the High Shelf website.
Click this link if you would like to read the issue like a journal: https://www.highshelfpress.com/issueiv Or here if you would like to see the table of contents: https://www.highshelfpress.com/issueivhome
reading
Thank you to Word Portland for inviting me to read at the next Word Portland event, April 1 – LFK – 188 State Street – 9pm. Sure, that’s after my bedtime but you only live once.
before the deluge
Let the music keep our spirits high.
Let the buildings keep our children dry.
– Jackson Browne
Photo: Prout’s Neck, ME., December 2016
Last night as I was sleeping
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
- Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly
understanding backward
Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.” – Soren Kierkegaard
once the storm is over
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. And you may not even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm is all about.” – Haruki Murakami 
“Don’t die til you
‘re dead.” – Mississippi John Hurt
Edge of Atlantic 