|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| Holding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch]
King Arthur:
How does it... um... how does it work?
Sir Lancelot:
I know not, my liege.
King Arthur:
Consult the Book of Armaments.
Brother Maynard:
Armaments, chapter two, verses nine through twenty-one.
Cleric:
[reading]
And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord,
bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies
to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the Lord did grin. And the people did
feast upon the lambs and sloths, and carp and anchovies, and orangutans
and breakfast cereals, and fruit-bats and large chu...
Brother Maynard:
Skip a bit, Brother...
Cleric:
And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin.
Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the
number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three.
Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou
then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being
the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade
of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff
it.
Brother Maynard:
Amen.
All:
Amen.
King Arthur:
Right. One... two... five.
Galahad:
Three, sir.
King Arthur:
Three.
| | |
| Where are the men?
Are ya'll done wasting time?
It's ok, you can come back now.
I know we aren't perfect either, but you can come back now.
We want to encourage you to become men.
And through your encouragement, we will become women.
Come back.
Be men
and we will be your women.
| | |
|
“On occasion I come across a young flutist in the downtown
commercial area of Portland. He is an Ichabod Crane of a man, wiry and
fragile,, and looks as if he is made of broomsticks and baling wire. He is
usually wearing baggy pants and a raggedy sweatshirt. His full head of hair
flies in a dozen different directions, especially on a windy day. There is a
beat-up old hat at his feet containing a few coins from appreciative fans. His
entire self is absorbed in the furious tooting on his cheap wooden instrument.
Coming
closer, one hears a strange thing: he’s playing nonsense notes. No melody. No
organized rhythm. The listener experiences incomprehensible music and the
mysterious force that propels those flying fingers. The musician never seems to
stop, lost in and driven by the inner power of some mysterious melody. He looks
straight ahead, apparently oblivious to gawkers like me.
I linger
for a few minutes whenever I see him. Inevitably I have created an imaginary
scenario between us in which I approach Mr. Flutist and point out the obvious:
“Excuse me, sir, are you aware that your music is not making any sense?”
He drops
the flute from his lips, eyes me, and says, with a hint of exasperation, “So
what? I’m crazy. But, man, I’ve got to play my song. I mean, don’t you?”
This book is about my song. It is not all the music in me,
but there is a lot of it here. It is a song primarily about the people with
whom I have lived and worked over the past several years as part of my mission
on the streets as a priest in the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. I have changed
most of their names, but their stories, their compelling stories, I could never
change. I have tried to express how they have broken me open and helped me to
understand my own heart, and how they have led me closer to the song of hope
for all human beings, which is in the heart of God.
I write this book so that the reader will have a
better understanding of the poor. I write it, too, to keep out in front of me a
fundamental chord in my song: that the church, when I becomes poor and
internalizes the suffering of the poor, understands compassion and the demands
of justice. The just and compassionate church becomes the incarnation of the
heart and song of Christ.”
-Gary Smith excerpt from "Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor"
| | |
| silence is good. i wish there was a forest or mountains nearby that i could get lost in so silence could overwhelm me. in silence and in nature, God reveals Himself to me. im tired of trying to impress people, im tired of worrying about what they think, if every little thing matters. i hate falling back into the problem i just got out of. im tired of people. and we have how many more weeks left of school...?
God, Father, please provide silence...
| | |
| An excerpt from 'The Great Divorce': The Spirit broke into laughter. "Don't you see you'll never paint at all if that's what you're thinking about?" he said. "What do you mean?" asked the Ghost. "Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you'll never learn to see the country." "But that's just how a real artist is interested in the country." "No. You're forgetting," said the Spirit. "That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light." "Oh, that's ages ago," said the Ghost. "One grows out of that. Of course, you haven't seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake." "One does, indeed. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous simulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the things he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower-become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations." wow. | | |
|
