Palm Sunday Quotes

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.

Anyway—because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next—and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis—at any time of night or day.

I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.

I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school. 'But how?' we ask. Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.' There they are. There *we* are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith. My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.

By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle.

Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in.

My dear young friends, I want to invite you to "dare to love". Do not desire anything less for your life than a love that is strong and beautiful and that is capable of making the whole of your existence a joyful undertaking of giving yourselves as a gift to God and your brothers and sisters, in imitation of the One who vanquished hatred and death for ever through love (cf. Rev 5:13). Love is the only force capable of changing the heart of the human person and of all humanity, by making fruitful the relations between men and women, between rich and poor, between cultures and civilizations. (Message for the 22nd World Youth Day: Palm Sunday, 1 April 2007)

Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.

Remember finally, that the ashes on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.

I propose that every person out of work be required to submit a book report before he or she gets his or her welfare check.

Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamn lonely anymore.

Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally and if they would contribute mutually to each others' welfare. This world is not a vale of sorrows if you will recognize discriminatingly what is truly excellent in it; and if you will avail yourself of it for mutual happiness and well-being. Therefore, let us explain as often as possible, and particularly at the departure of life, that we base our faith on firm foundations, on Truth for putting into action our ideas which do not depend on fables and ideas which Science has long ago proven to be false.

Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, "Sir, you did not give us enough information." I would add to that, "All the same, Sir, I'm not persuaded that we did the best we could with the information we had. Toward the end there, anyway, we had tons of information.

You become a hypocrite when you can't freely be at peace with others, but you can carry green palm leaves to church to commemorate "palm Sunday"! Throw those palm leaves somewhere; and lay your life down for someone to walk on and get to the destined land!

That's what is was to be young — to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.

Tomorrow the rush of men, all working for a living, would drown him; but now, at this moment, in this soft green twilight, this soft green Sunday evening, when the heart of the world seemed to lie beating in the palm of his hand, he sat in that huge house upstairs terrified that he would never live.

I have graded my separate works from A to D. The grades I hand out to myself do not place me in literary history. I am comparing myself with myself. Thus can I give myself an A-plus for Cat’s Cradle, while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare. The report card is chronological, so you can plot my rise and fall on graph paper, if you like: Player Piano B The Sirens of Titan A Mother Night A Cat’s Cradle A-plus God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater A Slaughterhouse-Five A-plus Welcome to the Monkey House B-minus Happy Birthday, Wanda June D Breakfast of Champions C Wampeters, Foma & Grandfalloons C Slapstick D Jailbird A Palm Sunday C

it has been my experience with literary critics and academics in this country that clarity looks a lot like laziness and ignorance and childishness and cheapness to them.

A society, on occasion, can be the worst possible describer of mental health.

I know at last what I want to be when I grow up. When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

After the war, I went to the University of Chicago, where I was pleased to study anthropology, a science that was mostly poetry, that involved almost no math at all.

So, Swami Jesus, will you go on the hajj this year?" Ravi said, bringing the palms of his hands together in front of his face in a reverent namaskar. "Does Mecca beckon?" He crossed himself. "Or will it be to Rome for your coronation as the next Pope Pius?" He drew in the air a Greek letter, making clear the spelling of his Mockery. "Have you found time yet to get the end of your pecker cut off and become a Jew? At the rate you're going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life.

It is our custom to consume the person we love. Taboo flesh: swollen genitalia nipples the scrotum the vulva the soles of the feet the palm of the hand heart and liver taste best. Cannibalism is blessed. I'll wear your jawbone round my neck listen to your vertebrae bone tapping bone in my wrists. I'll string your fingers round my waist - what a rigorous embrace. Over my heart I'll wear a brooch with a lock of hair. Nights I'll sleep cradling your skull sharpening my teeth on your toothless grin. Sundays there's Mass and communion and I'll put your relics to rest.

Vanity rather than wisdom determines how the world is run.

When I am paid a compliment, I must compare myself with the little donkey that carried Christ on Palm Sunday. And I say to myself: If that little creature, hearing the applause of the crowd, had become proud and had begun -- jackass that he was -- to bow his thanks left and right like a prima donna, how much hilarity he would have aroused! Don't act the same!

Receive this cross of ash upon your brow Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday's cross; The forests of the world are burning now And you make late repentance for the loss. But all the trees of God would clap their hands, The very stones themselves would shout and sing, If you could covenant to love these lands And recognize in Christ their lord and king. He sees the slow destruction of those trees, He weeps to see the ancient places burn, And still you make what purchases you please And still to dust and ashes you return. But Hope could rise from ashes even now Beginning with this sign upon your brow.

It is a tragedy, perhaps, that human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate.

I can only reply that the secret to success in every human endeavor is total concentration. Ask any great athlete.

As every married person here knows, love is a rotten substitute for respect.

The Donkey When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil's walking parody On all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still. Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.

I am embarrassed. We are all embarrassed. We Americans have guided our destinies so clumsily, with all the world watching, that we must now protect ourselves against our own government and our own industries.

Sometimes I don’t consider myself very good at life, so I hide in my profession.

That would certainly be a better name for this planet than Earth, since it would give people who just got here a clearer idea of what they were in for: Triage. Welcome to Triage.

I'm on the New York State Council for the Arts now, and every so often some other member talks about sending notices to college English departments about some literary opportunity, and I say, "Send them to the chemistry departments, send them to the zoology departments, send them to the anthropology departments and the astronomy departments and physics departments, and all the medical and law schools. That's where the writers are most likely to be.

Cal’s eyes fluttered shut and he rolled his palm over Percy’s ass as he deepened their kiss. Their tongues twisted and teeth bumped, and Percy nibbled that beautiful swollen bottom lip.

In an extended family, anybody can bug out of his own house for months, and still be among relatives. Nobody has to go on a hopeless quest for friendly strangers, which is what most Americans have to do.

Perhaps we are not following Christ all the way or in the right spirit. We are likely, for example, to be a little sparing of the palms and hosannas. We are chary of wielding the scourge of small cords, lest we should offend somebody or interfere with trade. We do not furnish up our wits to disentangle knotty questions about Sunday observance and tribute money, nor hasten to sit at the feet of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. We pass hastily over disquieting jests about making friends with the mammon of unrighteousness and alarming observations about bringing not peace but a sword; nor do we distinguish ourselves by the graciousness by which we sit at meat with publicans and sinners. Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore---and this in the name of the one who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which he passed through the world like a flame. Let us, in heaven's name, drag out the divine drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction. If the pious are the first to be shocked, so much worse for the pious---others will pass into the kingdom of heaven before them. If all men are offended because of Christ, let them be offended; but where is the sense of their being offended at something that is not Christ and is nothing like him? We do him singularly little honor by watering down his personality till it could not offend a fly. Surely it is not the business of the Church to adapt Christ to men, but to adapt men to Christ.

Now, at this moment, in this soft green twilight, this soft green Sunday evening, when the heart of the world seemed to lie beating in the palm of his hand, he sat in that huge house upstairs terrified that he would never live.

Listening to the Gospel on Palm Sunday, it struck me that many people criticise Pontius Pilate for his role in the affair while letting the multitude go scot free. Pilate did what little he could to dissuade them from the extremely unpleasant course of action on which they were set, but the multitude kept shouting for a crucifixion. Pilate could not have done more without provoking a riot. The crucifixion when it happened was a victory for direct democracy against the effete, liberal paternalism of Pilate. If I am right, and the crucifixion be seen as an early victory for the principle of direct democracy, then it must follow...that good men should struggle to confound and frustrate the multitude whenever possible.

on the first Palm Sunday. It happened a hundred and fifty years ago in America. It continues to happen today. If we think Jesus shares and endorses our disdain and enmity for our enemies, we don’t know the things that make for peace, and we are headed for

Our most dismaying failure is in the use of our knowledge of what human beings need in the way of bodily and spiritual nourishment. And I suspect that some of the guesses made by our ancestors are partly responsible for the starved bodies and spirits we see everywhere.

Recall the cold Of Towton on Palm Sunday before dawn, Wakefield, Tewkesbury : fastidious trumpets Shrilling into the ruck ; some trampled Acres, parched, sodden or blanched by sleet, Stuck with strange-postured dead. Recall the wind's Flurrying, darkness over the human mire.

In 809, and again in 813, multiple monasteries, convents, and churches were attacked in and around Jerusalem; Christians of both sexes were gang raped and massacred. In 929, on Palm Sunday,* another wave of atrocities broke out; churches were destroyed and Christians slaughtered.

Vatican’s secretly composed message to all of Germany’s Catholics. On Palm Sunday, 1937, the letter had been read by every priest, bishop, and cardinal across Germany to their congregations and three hundred thousand copies had been disseminated. Drafted by Munich’s Cardinal von Faulhaber and Pope Pius XI, it told German Catholics in carefully veiled terms that National Socialism was an evil religion based on racism that stood contrary to the church’s teachings and every man’s right to equality. It made reference to “an insane and arrogant prophet” without naming Hitler.

The four-week period of Advent before Christmas—and the six-week period of Lent before Easter—are times of penance and life change for Christians. In our book The Last Week, we suggested that Lent was a penance time for having been in the wrong procession and a preparation time for moving over to the right one by Palm Sunday. That day’s violent procession of the horse-mounted Pilate and his soldiers was contrasted with the nonviolent procession of the donkey-mounted Jesus and his companions. We asked: in which procession would we have walked then and in which do we walk now?

Death and suffering can’t matter nearly as much as I think they do. Since they are so common, my taking them so seriously must mean that I am insane. I must try to be saner.” Which

They can take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooooooon. ***

If you can be lifted up by your righteousness to sit with God, the whole planet will able to fit into your palm

Of course, if you can pretend to be strong all your life, then you can be very comforting to those around you.

You know what H.L. Mencken said one time about religious people? He said he’d been greatly misunderstood. He said he didn’t hate them. He simply found them comical.

Very few plays would work well with an altar as a fixed centerpiece.

Prohibition was better than no liquor at all.

I will tell you how to make money: Work very hard. I will tell you how to win love: Wear nice clothing and smile all the time. Learn the words to all the latest songs.

the marriage could have been perfect right up to the end, if only one partner or the other one had managed to die peacefully just a little ahead of time.

And what we will all be seeking when we decamp, and for the rest of our lives, will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say relatives. They no longer exist. The lack of them is not only the main cause, but probably the only cause of our shapeless discontent in the midst of such prosperity. We thought we could do without tribes and clans. Well, we can't.

For the liquor of Miss Amelia has a special quality of its own. It is clean and sharp on the tongue, but once down a man it glows inside him for a long time afterward. And that is not all. It is known that if a message is written with lemon juice on a clean sheet of paper there will be no sign of it. But if the paper is held for a moment to the fire then the letters turn brown and the meaning becomes clear. Imagine that the whisky is the fire and that the message is that which is known only in the soul of a man – then the worth of Miss Amelia's liquor can be understood. Things that have gone unnoticed, thoughts that have been harbored far back in the dark mind, are suddenly recognized and comprehended. A spinner who has thought only of the loom, the dinner pail, the bed, and then the loom again – this spinner might drink some on a Sunday and come across a marsh lily. And in his palm he might hold this flower, examining the golden dainty cup, and in him suddenly might come a sweetness keen as pain. A weaver might look up suddenly and see for the first time the cold, weird radiance of midnight January sky, and a deep fright at his own smallness stop his heart. Such things as these, then, happen when a man has drunk Miss Amelia's liquor. He may suffer, or he may be spent with joy – but the experience has shown the truth; he has warmed his soul and seen the message hidden there.

Well—all good things must come to an end, they say. So American freedom will come to an end, too, sooner or later. How will it end? As all freedoms end: by the surrender of our destinies to the highest laws.

I have never identified with the "K" in Kafka's works, by the way. Having grown up in a democracy, I have dared to imagine that I know at all times who is really in charge, what is really going on. This could be a mistake.

The women's liberation movement of today in America, in its most oceanic sense, is a wish by women to be liked for something other than their reproductive abilities, especially since the planet is harrowingly overpopulated. And the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment by male state legislators is this clear statement by men, in my opinion: "We're sorry, girls, but your reproductive abilities are about all we can really like you for." The truth.

This is certainly that kind of masterpiece, and a new name should be created for such an all-frequencies assault on the sensibilities. I propose the name blivit. This is a word which during my adolescence was defined by peers as “two pounds of shit in a one-pound bag.

Parent time is like fairy time but real. It is magic without pixie dust and spells. It defies physics without bending the laws of time and space. It is that truism everyone offers but no one believes until after they have children: that time will actual speed, fleet enough to leave you jet-lagged and whiplashed and racing all at once. Your tiny, perfect baby nestles in your arms his first afternoon home, and then ten months later, he's off to his senior year of high school. You give birth to twins so small and alike, they lie mirrored, each with a head in the palm of one hand while their toes reach only to the crooks of your elbow, but it's only a year before they start looking at colleges. It is so impossible yet so universally experienced that magic is the only explanation. Except then there are also the excruciating rainy Sundays when the kids are whiny, bored, and beastly, and it takes a hundred hours to get from breakfast to bedtime, the long weekends when you wonder whose demonic idea it was to trap you in your home with you bevy of abominable children for a decade without school.

Sentences spoken by writers, unless they have been written out first, rarely say what writers wish to say. Writers are unlucky speakers, by and large, which accounts for their being in a profession which encourages them to stay at their desks for years, if necessary, pondering what to say next and how best to say it. Interviewers propose to speed up this process by trepaning writers, so to speak, and fishing around in their brains for unused ideas which otherwise might never get out of there. Not a single idea has ever been discovered by means of this brutal method--and still the trepaning of authors goes on every day. I now refuse all those who wish to take the top off my skull yet again. The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

Some of you might go out and kill Communists, but that is no longer a fashionable thing to do. And you wouldn’t be killing real Communists anyway. This country has fulfilled more of the requirements of the Communist Manifesto than any avowedly Communist nation ever did. Maybe we’re the Communists.

And yet Christians celebrate Palm Sunday year after year. Don’t we believe that something monumental happened when the King of Kings eschewed the warhorse to ride a peace donkey? Don’t we at least believe Jesus offers us an alternative to all those dudes with their horses, tanks and ICBMs? We must believe it! The Palm Sunday shout is hosanna! It means “save now.” In a world married to war, now more than ever, we need to acclaim Christ as King and shout hosanna. But our hosanna must not be a plea for Jesus to join our side, bless our troops, and help us win our war—it must be a plea to save us from our addiction to war.

A priest came. He told her she must send for d’Etioles; obediently she did so, but her husband begged to be excused, saying that he was not well. Then she confessed and communicated. The next day was Palm Sunday, the King was in church all day. Faithful Gontaut, Soubise and Choiseul stayed with her, until she said: ‘It is coming now, my friends; I think you had better leave me to my soul, my women and the priest.’ She told her women not to change her clothes, as it tired her and was no longer worth while. The priest made a movement as if to leave the room; she said: ‘One moment, M. le Curé, we’ll go together’, and died.

Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.

Our freedom to say or write whatever we please in this country is holy to me. It is a rare privilege not only on this planet, but throughout the universe, I suspect. And it is not something somebody gave us. It is a thing we give to ourselves. "Meditation is holy to me, for I believe that all the secrets of existence and nonexistence are somewhere in our heads--or in other people's heads. "And I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. "By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. "This to me is a miracle.

What we see on Palm Sunday are two parades. One from the west and one from the east. One where Caesar’s Prefect of Judea rides a warhorse and one where God’s anointed Messiah rides a donkey. One is a military parade projecting the power of empire—the Roman Empire. The other is a prophetic parade announcing the arrival of an alternative empire—the kingdom of God. One parade derives its power from a willingness to crucify its enemies. The other derives its power by embracing the cross and forgiving its enemies. One is a perpetuation of the domination systems of empire. The other is the only hope the world has for true liberation. The question is, which parade will we march in?

Mostly, they were ashamed of us. Our floppy straw hats and threadbare clothes. Our heavy accents. Every sing oh righ? Our cracked, callused palms. Our deeply lined faces black from years of picking peaches and staking grape plants in the sun. They longed for real fathers with briefcases who went to work in a suit and tie and only mowed the grass on Sundays. They wanted different and better mothers who did not look so worn out. Can't you put on a little lipstick? They dreaded rainy days in the country when we came to pick them up after school in our battered old farm trucks. They never invited over friends to our crowded homes in J-town. We live like beggars. They would not be seen with us at the temple on the Emperor's birthday. They would not celebrate the annual Freeing of the Insects with us at the end of summer in the park. They refused to join hands and dance with us in the streets on the Festival of the Autumnal Equinox. They laughed at us whenever we insisted that they bow to us first thing in the morning and with each passing day they seemed to slip further and further from our grasp.

I would not mind if books simpler than this one, but combining fiction and fact, were also called blivits. This would encourage The New York Times Book Review to establish a third category for best sellers, one long needed, in my opinion. If there were a separate list for blivits, then authors of blivits could stop stepping in the faces of mere novelists and historians and so on.

VONNEGUT: I said that only one person on the entire planet benefited from the raid, which must have cost tens of millions of dollars. The raid didn’t shorten the war by half a second, didn’t weaken a German defense or attack anywhere, didn’t free a single person from a death camp. Only one person benefited—not two or five or ten. Just one. INTERVIEWER: And who was that? VONNEGUT: Me. I got three dollars for each person killed. Imagine that.

I say she was strong. We all say she was strong. Yes, and in this bicentennial springtime we can say that she was like a legendary pioneer woman in her seeming strengths. We know now that she was only pretending to be strong—which is the best any of us can do. Of course, if you can pretend to be strong all your life, which is what Lavina did, then you can be very comforting to those around you. You can allow them to be childlike now and then.

Here is how I propose to end book-banning in this country once and for all: Every candidate for school committee should be hooked up to a lie detector and asked this question: “Have you read a book from start to finish since high school?” or “Did you even read a book from start to finish in high school?” If the truthful answer is “no,” then the candidate should be told politely that he cannot get on the school committee and blow off his big bazoo about how books make children crazy. Whenever ideas are squashed in this country, literate lovers of the American experiment write careful and intricate explanations of why all ideas must be allowed to live. It is time for them to realize that they are attempting to explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans. From now on, I intend to limit my discourse with dimwitted Savonarolas to this advice: "Have somebody read the First Amendment to the United States Constitution out loud to you, you God damned fool!" Well--the American Civil Liberties Union or somebody like that will come to the scene of trouble, as they always do. They will explain what is in the Constitution, and to whom it applies. They will win. And there will be millions who are bewildered and heartbroken by the legal victory, who think some things should never be said--especially about religion. They are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hi ho.

Be warned: If you allow yourself to see dignity in someone, you have doomed yourself to wanting to understand and help whoever it is. "If you see dignity in anything, in fact--it doesn't have to be human--you will still want to understand it and help it. Many people are now seeing dignity in the lower animals and the plant world and waterfalls and deserts--and even in the entire planet and its atmosphere. And now they are helpless not to want to understand and help those things. "Poor souls!

I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable—and therefore understood.

Sunday Morning I Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. She dreams a little, and she feels the dark Encroachment of that old catastrophe, As a calm darkens among water-lights. The pungent oranges and bright, green wings Seem things in some procession of the dead, Winding across wide water, without sound. The day is like wide water, without sound, Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet Over the seas, to silent Palestine, Dominion of the blood and sepulchre. II Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else In any balm or beauty of the earth, Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul. III Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth. No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind He moved among us, as a muttering king, Magnificent, would move among his hinds, Until our blood, commingling, virginal, With heaven, brought such requital to desire The very hinds discerned it, in a star. Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be The blood of paradise? And shall the earth Seem all of paradise that we shall know? The sky will be much friendlier then than now, A part of labor and a part of pain, And next in glory to enduring love, Not this dividing and indifferent blue. IV She says, "I am content when wakened birds, Before they fly, test the reality Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings; But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields Return no more, where, then, is paradise?" There is not any haunt of prophecy, Nor any old chimera of the grave, Neither the golden underground, nor isle Melodious, where spirits gat them home, Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured As April's green endures; or will endure Like her remembrance of awakened birds, Or her desire for June and evening, tipped By the consummation of the swallow's wings

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment. Our American heirs may find it incredible, as most foreigners do right now, that a nation would want to enforce as a law something which sounds more like a dream, which reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." How could a nation with such a law raise its children in an atmosphere of decency? It couldn't--it can't. So the law will surely be repealed soon for the sake of children.

Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them. —Psalm 111:2 (NIV) The church I attend recently celebrated its 150th anniversary. It’s been a festive year, replete with special dinners, panel discussions, and a book on the church’s history. But what amazed me even more were all the little stories that formed the big story—those quiet, individual witnesses of faith who, taken together, made up this grand sweep of 150 years. One woman has been a member for nearly half the church’s life. Fifty-two Sundays times seven decades is how many church services? “You’ve heard thousands of sermons!” I said. “What do you remember about the best ones?” She smiled. “The best sermons are the ones I think about all week. Because then I know God is working in me.” That simple lesson of faith was the start of a new practice for me. When I hear a phrase or sentence in a sermon that especially strikes me, I’ll write it down on the bulletin or on whatever I have handy. (Once it was the palm of my hand!) Then I pin that phrase to the bulletin board behind my computer. This week’s was: May God give me the grace to understand that the world is too small for anything but Love. I see it every day, reminding me to ponder how I might live that message. Like my friend at church, I’ve been able to see in a new way how God is working in my life—all week long. Guide my life, God, by Your Words; that in hearing them, I may live according to Your wishes. —Jeff Japinga Digging Deeper: Pss 105, 111, 119:18; 1 Pt 2:2

The Seer's Map by Stewart Stafford Howling dog, thou cursèd hound, Plaguest thy master with baleful sound, The cur's yelps taint the air around; A dirge for all that hear thy wound. The rooftop magpie foretells: Herald of guests to visit soon, A noisy speech announceth, Companions of the afternoon. Lucky horseshoe and iron key, Bringeth good fortune to the finder, But spilling salt provokes fate, And draws the evil eye's reminder. A shoe upon the table laid, Tempts the dead to live anon, For this ungracious gesture waketh, Flesh and blood from skeleton. Who crosses the path of hare or priest, A perilous milestone on thy road, Their very presence signifies That gathering trouble doth forebode. A toad on thy merry travels, Brings sweet smiles and kindest charms, Keep one about thy person warm, To shelter safe from danger's harms. Red sky at night delights the eye, Of shepherd that beholds thy light, Thy colour doth betoken dawn Of weather fair and clear and bright. Red sky at morn troubles the heart, Of shepherd that surveys thy shade, Thy hue doth presage day Of stormy blast and tempest made. December's thunder balm, Speaks of harvest's tranquil mind, January's thunder, fierce! Warns of war and gales unkind. An itchy palm hints at gold To come into thy hand ere long, But if thou scratch it, thou dost lose The fair wind that blows so strong. A Sunday Christmas forewarns: Three signs of what the year shall hold; A winter mild, a Lenten wind, And summer dry, to then unfold. Good luck charm on New Year's Day Maketh fortune bloom all year, But to lose it or give it away, Thou dost invite ill-omened fear. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Beneath the table, Ryder releases my hand and lays it open in my lap, palm up. And then I feel him tracing letters on my palm with his fingertip. I. L. O. V. E. Y.O.U. I can’t help myself--I shiver. I shiver a lot when Ryder’s around, it turns out. He seems to have that effect on me. “Are you cold, Jemma?” Laura Grace asks me. “Ryder, go get her a sweatshirt or something. You two are done eating, anyway. Go on. Take her into the living room and light the fire.” “Nah, I’m fine,” I say, just because I know the old Jemma would have argued. “Well, go work on your project, then. It’s warmer in the den.” “My room’s like an oven,” Ryder deadpans, and I have to stifle a laugh, pretending to cough instead. “Take her up there, then, before she catches cold. Go. Scoot.” Laura Grace waves her hands in our direction. We rise from the table in unison, both of us trying to look as unhappy about it as possible. Silently, I follow him out. As soon as the door swings shut behind us, he reaches for my hand and pulls me close. “Shh, listen,” I say, cocking my head toward the door. “I still can’t believe it,” comes Laura Grace’s muffled voice. “The both of them, going off to school together, just like we always hoped they would. They’ll find their way into each other’s hearts eventually, just you wait and see.” I hear my mom’s tinkling laughter. “I guess their plan to escape each other didn’t work out so well after all, did it, now? I’m sure they never even imagined--” “I just hope they don’t kill each other,” Daddy interrupts. “They’ll be fine,” Mr. Marsden answers. “Well, I guess we won this round, didn’t we?” Mama says, her voice full of obvious delight. I glance up at Ryder, dressed for Sunday dinner--khakis, plaid button-down with a T-shirt beneath. His spiky hair is sticking up haphazardly, his dimples wide as he smiles down at me with so much love in those deep, dark chocolate eyes of his that it lights up his whole face. And me? I’m so happy when I’m with him that Nan says I glow, that a bright, shining light seems to radiate off the pair of us wherever we go. Despite their gloating, it’s easy to see that they didn’t win, our parents. Nope. We won.

No respecter of evidence has ever found the least clue as to what life is all about, and what people should do with it. Oh, there have been lots of brilliant guesses. But honest, educated people have to identify with them as such--as guesses. What are guesses worth? Scientifically and legally, they are not worth doodley-squat. As the saying goes: “Your guess is as good as mine.” The guesses we like best, as with so many things we like best, were taught to us in childhood--by people who loved us and wished us well. We are reluctant to criticize those guesses. It is an ultimate act of rudeness to find fault with anything which is given to us in a spirit of love. So a modern, secular education is often painful. By its very nature, it invites us to question the wisdom of the ones we love. Too bad. I have said that one guess is as good as another, but that is only roughly so. Some guesses are crueler than others--which is to say, harder on human beings, and on other animals as well. The belief that God wants heretics burned to death is a case in point. Some guesses are more suicidal than others. The belief that a true lover of God is immune to the bites of copperheads and rattlesnakes is a case in point. Some guesses are greedier and more egocentric than others. Belief in the divine right of kings and presidents is a case in point. Those are all discredited guesses. But it is reasonable to suppose that other bad guesses are poisoning our lives today. A good education in skepticism can help us to discover those bad guesses, and to destroy them with mockery and contempt. Most of them were made by honest, decent people who had no way of knowing what we know, or what we can find out, if we want to. We have one hell of a lot of good information about our bodies, about our planet, and the universe--about our past. We don’t have to guess as much as the old folks did. Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, “Sir, you did not give us enough information.” I would add to that, “All the same, Sir, I’m not persuaded that we did the best we could with the information we had. Toward the end there, anyway, we had tons of information.

If I talk about the Loud family now, will all of you know who I mean? I mean a family of prosperous human beings in California, whose last name is Loud. I suggest to you that the Louds were healthy Earthlings who had everything but a religion in which they could believe. There was nothing to tell them what they should want, what they should shun, what they should do next. Socrates told us that the unexamined life wasn’t worth living. The Louds demonstrated that the morally unstructured life is a clunker, too. Christianity could not nourish the Louds. Neither could Buddhism or the profit motive of participation in the arts, or any other nostrum on America’s spiritual smorgasbord. So the Louds were dying before our eyes. Now is as good a time as any to mention White House Prayer Breakfasts, I guess. I think we all know now that religion of that sort is about as nourishing to the human spirit as potassium cyanide. We have been experimenting with it. Every guinea pig died. We are up to our necks in dead guinea pigs. The lethal ingredient in those breakfasts wasn’t prayer. And it wasn’t the eggs or the orange juice or the hominy grits. It was a virulent new strain of hypocrisy which did everyone in. If I have offended anyone here by talking of the need of a new religion, I apologize. I am willing to drop the word religion, and substitute three other words for it. Three other words are heartfelt moral code. We sure need such a thing, and it should be simple enough and reasonable enough for anyone to understand. The trouble with so many of the moral codes we have inherited is that they are subject to so many interpretations. We require specialists, historians and archaeologists and linguists and so on, to tell us where this or that idea may have come from, to suggest what this or that statement might actually mean. This is good news for hypocrites, who enjoy feeling pious, no matter what they do. It may be that moral simplicity is not possible in modern times. It may be that simplicity and clarity can come only from a new Messiah, who may never come. We can talk about portents, if you like. I like a good portent as much as anyone. What might be the meaning of the Comet Kahoutek, which was to make us look upward, to impress us with the paltriness of our troubles, to cleanse our souls with cosmic awe. Kahoutek was a fizzle, and what might this fizzle mean? I take it to mean that we can expect no spectacular miracles from the heavens, that the problems of ordinary human beings will have to be solved by ordinary human beings. The message of Kahoutek is: “Help is not on the way. Repeat: help is not on the way.

If I grew an inch a day, in 365 days I’d be one year tall. I’d be over three basketball hoops high, but I’d still only be able to palm a Sunday once a year.

My books are being thrown out of school libraries all over the country—because they’re supposedly obscene. I’ve seen letters to small-town newspapers that put Slaughterhouse Five in the same class with Deep Throat and Hustler magazine. How could anybody masturbate to Slaughterhouse Five?

There is this drawback, though: If you give to that sort of a stranger the uncritical respect that you give to friends and relatives, you will also want to understand and help him. There is no way to avoid this. Be warned: If you allow yourself to see dignity in someone, you have doomed yourself to wanting to understand and help whoever it is. If you see dignity in anything, in fact--it doesn't have to be human--you will still want to understand it and help it. Many people are now seeing dignity in the lower animals and the plant world and waterfalls and deserts--and even in the entire planet and its atmosphere. And now they are helpless not to want to understand and help those things. "Poor souls!

In a creative writing class of twenty people anywhere in this country, six students will be startlingly talented. Two of those might actually publish something by and by. . . They will have something other than literature itself on their minds. They will probably be hustlers, too. I mean that they won’t want to wait passively for somebody to discover them. They will insist on being read. That's romance that work.

What makes me think we need a new religion? That’s easy. An effective religion allows people to imagine from moment to moment what is going on and how they should behave. Christianity used to be like that. Our country is now jammed with human beings who say out loud that life is chaos to them, and that it doesn’t seem to matter what anybody does next. This is worse than being seasick.

a culture, a combination of ideas and artifacts can sometimes make a healthy person behave against his or her best interests and against the best interests of the society and the planet too

the lesson that underlies all his work, a lesson, bluntly uttered by a character in one of his early novels, that he passed on to fans who sought his advice: “There’s only one rule I know of—Goddam it, you’ve got to be kind.” Coming from a long line of German Freethinkers, Vonnegut was not a Christian, though he spoke of Jesus as “the greatest and most humane of human beings.” In a talk he gave at St. Clement Episcopal Church in New York City (“Palm Sunday”), he said: “I am enchanted by the Sermon on the Mount. Being merciful, it seems to me, is the only good idea we have had so far. Perhaps we will get another good idea by and by—and then we will have two good ideas.

The so-called profession of public relations, an American invention, stands entirely disgraced today.

És tudjuk azt is, hogy azok a csúnya szavak nem sok kárt tesznek gyermekeinkben. Bennünk sem tettek kárt fiatalkorunkban. A gonosz cselekedetek meg a hazugság – azok tesznek kárt bennünk.

Csodáltatok-e valaha üresfejű írót, aki mestere a nyelvnek? Nem. A magatok nyertes irodalmi stílusa tehát kezdődjön a fejetekben levő érdekes ideákkal. Keressetek olyan tárgyat, ami közel áll a szívetekhez, és amiről azt érzitek, hogy a többiek szívéhez is közel kell állnia. Ez az őszinte érzés, ne pedig a nyelvi játszadozás legyen stílusotokban a leghatásosabb és legcsábítóbb elem. Mellesleg nem biztatlak benneteket arra, hogy írjatok regényt – habár nem bánnám, ha írnátok, feltéve, hogy olyasmiről írtok, ami igazán közel áll a szívetekhez. Megteszi egy kérvény a polgármesterhez a házatok előtt tátongó gödör ügyében, vagy egy szerelmes levél a szomszéd kislányhoz. De azért ne térjetek el a tárgytól. Ami a nyelv használatát illeti: ne feledjétek, hogy nyelvünk két nagy mestere, William Shakespeare és James Joyce szinte gyermeteg mondatokat írtak, amikor tárgyuk a lehető legmélyebb volt. „Lenni vagy nem lenni?” – kérdi Shakespeare Hamletje. A leghosszabb szó ötbetűs. Joyce, legfickósabb hangulatában, olyan bonyolult és csillogó mondatot tudott összerakni, mint amilyen a Kleopátra nyaklánca, de legkedvesebb mondatom Eveline című elbeszélésében így szól: „Fáradt volt”. Az elbeszélésnek ezen a pontján semmi más szó nem lehetett volna szívettépőbb az olvasó szemében, mint ezek a szavak. A nyelv egyszerűsége nem csak tisztességes, de talán egyenesen szent. A Biblia olyan mondattal kezdődik, ami jócskán belefér egy elevenebb tizennégy esztendősnek az íróképességébe: „Kezdetben teremtette Isten az eget és a földet.

I spoke one time at the Library of Congress, in 1972, or so. A man stood up in the middle of the audience, when I was about halfway through, and he said, "What right have you, as leader of America's young people, to make those people so cynical and pessimistic?" I had no good answer, so I left the stage. Talk about profiles in courage!

People who can read and write expertly, as you can, are miracles and, in my opinion, entitle us to suspect we might be civilized after all.