Home > Work > Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
101 " Picasso said, “Everything is a miracle; it’s a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar "
― Anne Lamott , Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
102 " Langston Hughes: Gather out of star-dust Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust Not for sale. "
103 " It all made me think of Eugene O’Neill’s line, “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue. "
104 " Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. T. S. ELIOT "
105 " Miles Davis saying, “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there. "
106 " with the animals dying around us our lost feelings we are saying thank you with the forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives we are saying thank you with the words going out like cells of a brain with the cities growing over us like the earth we are saying thank you faster and faster with nobody listening we are saying thank you we are saying thank you and waving dark though it is —W. S. MERWIN "
107 " Ferlinghetti writing “I am waiting for the rebirth of wonder "
108 " The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe. JOANNA MACY "
109 " Augustine said that to look for God is to find him, "
110 " All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But what I’ve discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it. "
111 " I’m pretty sure that it is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed—which is to say, that we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace. "
112 " My idea of everything going smoothly on an airplane is (a) that I not die in a slow-motion fiery crash or get stabbed to death by terrorists and (b) that none of the other passengers try to talk to me. All conversation should end at the moment the wheels leave the ground. "
113 " Faulkner describes in Light in August as “a prone and somnolent yellow cat, "
114 " thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish. "
115 " In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die. "
116 " How come you can hear a chord, and then another chord, and then your heart breaks open? "
117 " sixth chapter of Luke: “Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. "
118 " forgiveness meant that God is for giving, "
119 " And did you get what you wanted from this life even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. "
120 " saw something once from the Jewish Theological Seminary that said, “A human life is like a single letter of the alphabet. It can be meaningless. Or it can be a part of a great meaning. "