The lead singer of one of my favorite bands this summer, The Hold Steady, singing about Minnesota Twins baseball. Heaven is whenever... (play on Hold Steady album title!)
Don't Call Them Twinkies | The Current Music Blog | The Current from Minnesota Public Radio
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Brief Thoughts on a Short Story
One joy of the short story is that even when life is busy, a story might be read that captures something of the wonder, beauty, mystery of life, crystalizing it into a small gem. Last night before going to sleep, I read William Maxwell’s story “What He Was Like.” In a few pages Maxwell evokes the wonder and mystery of the inner life. The plot is simple enough, a man keeping a diary, his death, his daughter’s reading of his diary and wondering why she did not know so much about her father, her dismay at his interior life.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the diary as noted in the story: “If I had my life to live over again – but one doesn’t. One goes forward instead, dragging a cart piled with lost opportunities.” “To be able to do in your mind what it is probably not a good idea to do in actuality is a convenience not always sufficiently appreciated.”
Our lives are what we do, but also what we think, dream, imagine, appreciate. Maxwell’s story reminded me of that again.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Here are a couple of excerpts from the diary as noted in the story: “If I had my life to live over again – but one doesn’t. One goes forward instead, dragging a cart piled with lost opportunities.” “To be able to do in your mind what it is probably not a good idea to do in actuality is a convenience not always sufficiently appreciated.”
Our lives are what we do, but also what we think, dream, imagine, appreciate. Maxwell’s story reminded me of that again.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Friday, September 10, 2010
Why I Continue to Read the Bible
Why I Continue To Read the Bible
Sometimes because I think I have to;
Sometimes because I think I should;
Mostly for those times when the words
are like a gentle rain for
the parched field of my soul,
the familiar voice of a friend
in a time of deep loneliness,
an axe
for the frozen sea inside (Kafka).
For times like the other day
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
(Psalm 131:2)
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Sometimes because I think I have to;
Sometimes because I think I should;
Mostly for those times when the words
are like a gentle rain for
the parched field of my soul,
the familiar voice of a friend
in a time of deep loneliness,
an axe
for the frozen sea inside (Kafka).
For times like the other day
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
(Psalm 131:2)
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Friday, September 3, 2010
Autumn Nostalgia
Today felt like autumn here in Duluth. It was rainy and temperatures struggled to get into the low 60s. Autumn often brings with it nostalgic feelings. School begins in the fall, and I love learning. I spent twenty-seven of my fifty-one years preparing for school in one form or another in the fall of the year.
I have been thinking about my childhood as I read Josh Wilker’s memoir Cardboard Gods. Wilker tells his story with the aid of baseball cards from his childhood collection (I collected baseball cards and tonight before their game the Twins introduced the top fifty Twins from their fifty years ). I have also been thinking about my childhood this week as I have been preparing to officiate at the funeral of a young woman (forty-six) who grew up in the same neighborhood as I did. Meeting with her family has brought back a number of memories.
In his book, Wilker writes the following: You can’t be a child forever. You have to slice that part of yourself away and put on a uniform of some sort, whether it’s official or unofficial, and punch that clock. Is there a way to do this and still hang on to a wider sense of the world?
Wilker poses a great question. Can we hang on to a wider sense of the world? Can we retain some of the sense of wonder that we have as children? Can we keep something of what seems an almost innate sense of compassion in children?
Perhaps one way we carry with us some of the positive qualities of childhood is to nurture a healthy nostalgia. By a healthy nostalgia I mean revisiting the past not to hold it up as an ideal now unachievable, but to cultivate some of the important feelings, attitudes and moral sentiments that may have been present. Such healthy nostalgia can come with a wistfulness and sense of loss, but those should not overshadow the cultivation of moral sentiments.
I think there may be something here. Didn’t Jesus encourage the cultivation of certain aspects of childhood?
Not long ago, I encountered another literary exploration of the past, one set in autumn. The sense of loss is palpable. Nevertheless it permitted me to think about my past in a different way - another aid to a healthy nostalgia.
Now I peek into windows and open doors and do not find that air of permission. It has fled the world. Girls walk by me carrying their invisible bouquets from fields still steeped in grace, and I look up in the manner of one who follows with his eyes the passage of a hearse, and remembers what pierces him. John Updike, “In Football Season”
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
I have been thinking about my childhood as I read Josh Wilker’s memoir Cardboard Gods. Wilker tells his story with the aid of baseball cards from his childhood collection (I collected baseball cards and tonight before their game the Twins introduced the top fifty Twins from their fifty years ). I have also been thinking about my childhood this week as I have been preparing to officiate at the funeral of a young woman (forty-six) who grew up in the same neighborhood as I did. Meeting with her family has brought back a number of memories.
In his book, Wilker writes the following: You can’t be a child forever. You have to slice that part of yourself away and put on a uniform of some sort, whether it’s official or unofficial, and punch that clock. Is there a way to do this and still hang on to a wider sense of the world?
Wilker poses a great question. Can we hang on to a wider sense of the world? Can we retain some of the sense of wonder that we have as children? Can we keep something of what seems an almost innate sense of compassion in children?
Perhaps one way we carry with us some of the positive qualities of childhood is to nurture a healthy nostalgia. By a healthy nostalgia I mean revisiting the past not to hold it up as an ideal now unachievable, but to cultivate some of the important feelings, attitudes and moral sentiments that may have been present. Such healthy nostalgia can come with a wistfulness and sense of loss, but those should not overshadow the cultivation of moral sentiments.
I think there may be something here. Didn’t Jesus encourage the cultivation of certain aspects of childhood?
Not long ago, I encountered another literary exploration of the past, one set in autumn. The sense of loss is palpable. Nevertheless it permitted me to think about my past in a different way - another aid to a healthy nostalgia.
Now I peek into windows and open doors and do not find that air of permission. It has fled the world. Girls walk by me carrying their invisible bouquets from fields still steeped in grace, and I look up in the manner of one who follows with his eyes the passage of a hearse, and remembers what pierces him. John Updike, “In Football Season”
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
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