tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50464271009668458792024-03-19T07:55:34.070-05:00She's No LadyArbitrary Ponderings From a Busy BettyLori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.comBlogger1379125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-72077409873944273202024-01-21T16:18:00.003-06:002024-01-21T16:37:21.090-06:00The Anesthetized Life of the Metaverse<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy-0fF8kJ2VA4IiMh7eBM1wasP7pUDkHVjmkMZmu9Pv4nT-wjHFDdE_zWEueyO8ihyyxYDHkBQYI5igYw_3f_Vt3Bp4oGpKhf-fniwsU1Ar__mLLMQf9IPxfm8qrpJ3NpUG5CqrJnfTV1sMB3Zs4m7c41KAXH6__3m57pyZvjFkfPqpJcvrbeMrg2VNj8/s1200/metaverse.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy-0fF8kJ2VA4IiMh7eBM1wasP7pUDkHVjmkMZmu9Pv4nT-wjHFDdE_zWEueyO8ihyyxYDHkBQYI5igYw_3f_Vt3Bp4oGpKhf-fniwsU1Ar__mLLMQf9IPxfm8qrpJ3NpUG5CqrJnfTV1sMB3Zs4m7c41KAXH6__3m57pyZvjFkfPqpJcvrbeMrg2VNj8/w640-h360/metaverse.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Oxygen;"><br />The advent of analgesics made it possible for most of us to quell ordinary daily physical pain...and sometimes even extraordinary pain. Then, a broad range of psychotropics brought us options to reduce or numb our mental and emotional pain. This age of pharmaceuticals is a blessing, is it not? </span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">Yet I can't help but wonder...what have we lost in this era of accessible, easy relief? </span><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">When these substance interventions fail us - which they sometimes do - when the pain remains, do we even know how to live? Do we have the </span><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">Resilience, Grit or Perseverance to endure? Do we know how to bear up under that which seems unbearable? </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">We do something similar with death. We remove the reality from ourselves as quickly as possible. We scurry the body off to a morgue where we don't have to see it. We hide it. We distance ourselves from it. We sterilize it. We clean up the dead body, apply makeup, dress it up, make it as pretty and real looking as possible, and put it on display. I recognize these rituals carry symbolism of respect and dignity, or may represent an important step for some on the road to "closure" (if such a thing even exists), and for some, it even brings a sense of hope. I get it. But I wonder about the long term effects of beautifying the grotesque. Death is hideous. Generations who came before us knew this. They didn't have the option to escape the raw realities of death. It's not the gateway to a "better place." It is creation coming undone. It's the wrenching apart of personhood - body and soul - which was created to be whole. It's not something to beautify, make clean, or soften with platitudes...like a ring in a pig's snout, none of this changes the filth, the coldness, the darkness, the stench.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">Pharmaceuticals and embalming aren't the only ways we anesthetize and soften the reality of life. We have grown accustomed to cleanliness, to whitewashing, to ease, in many facets of life. We hop in our cars for an effortless journey to the grocery store where very little exertion lands us a cart full of fresh and already-prepared food. We cook that food over a fire we summon with the push of a button, then tidy up with clean water that streams into the very room where the mess is. Our most foul excretions are immediately spirited away to the underground depths as if they never existed. Our facial blemishes are magically masked with any number of cosmetics. Clothes show up ready-to-wear in boxes dropped conveniently near our front door. When we soil them, machines clean them with little effort on our part. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">Don't misunderstand...I am not glorifying the past or the way things used to be. No rose-colored-glasses here. Hardship and difficulty can forge character, reveal courage, instill strength...but they also produce fatigue, pain, sickness, and discouragement. Progress - and I believe modern plumbing and cars and gas stoves and washing machines are examples of creative progress - is good. But when we move forward without consideration of the impact on the body, soul, and psyche, we may do ourselves and our posterity a disservice. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">Since the Industrial Revolution, we have moved further and further from SOURCES of things. We are distanced from the land that produces our food. We are distanced from the bodies of water that keep us clean and hydrated. We are distanced from the mechanics of our machines. Indeed, as technology advances, more and more specialization is needed to understand the physical world we interact with. But as we abandon the source, we lose understanding of how our world works (see Matthew Crawford's wonderful philosophical musings on this in <i><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467/ref=asc_df_0143117467/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312168414377&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17590943505221445330&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9022881&hvtargid=pla-452786773339&psc=1&mcid=8dc8c3ec45f131459f6c881b4af06bd2&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnrOtBhDIARIsAFsSe53ncOM4e1NOfsLQ_2A2BA33ziPCd6A8jSiQ7fahrHrq4gYvi4yzBewaAtROEALw_wcB" target="_blank">Shop Craft as Soul Craft</a></b></i> and <i>The World Beyond Your Head</i>.). </span><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">This distancing breeds unfamiliarity. We've lost connection with the created world. We are out of touch with the materiality, the physicality of our lives.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">In my mind, that makes Meta a natural next step. Zuckerberg, its creator, describes the Metaverse as the "embodied internet where you're in the experience." Ironically, the very nature of this universe is a DISEMBODIED one...or perhaps its a world of "embodied" ISOLATION. Here you can experience one another in an anesthetized environment where you won't have to smell another's sweat or stale breath, where you won't be confronted with real flaws of others or have yours exposed. You will never truly know or be known in Metaverse because you will always inhabit a fictionalized version of yourself alongside the fictionalized versions of another being, all staged in a fictionalized world. You can leave an experience without explanation and blame a bad internet connection. You can project a feigned presence while remaining wholly distracted by a device or the real presence of another (sure we can do that now, but when we are present the other can at least SEE b/c we inhabit the same real space). The experience claims that your avatar presence - which is an entirely fabricated idealized version of "you" - will allow a more "natural and vivid" experience with "the <i>feeling </i>of presence" made possible through "living 3D <i>representations </i>of you." </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">Here's the thing. The stuff we can do with new technology is SUPER cool. I'm blown away by what is being discovered, learned, built, and added to the world of our experiences. There are some amazing, redemptive, and FUN applications for these innovations! But I can't shake my discomfort with the language of "embodiment." As humans made in the image of a Trinitarian God (communal by nature) who took on flesh (embodied presence), we are designed to live and experience life in and through our flesh and bone bodies, not through a curated ethereal disembodied experience. In REAL life, being physically present with someone experiencing deep physical pain is gut-wrenching. It doesn't need "vivifying." It can't be escaped. The person in pain doesn't need the "feeling of presence" but ACTUAL presence. In a 3D universe, I can be "present" with you while you suffer and not FEEL your suffering. I can pretend to share in it without any consequence to my own person. And without the benefit of helping you bear that burden. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">I'm reminded of this quote from Buechner's The Hungering Dark:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: Oxygen;"><i>'No man is an island,' wrote Dr. Donne...'for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.' ...any man's death reminds us of our common destiny...our lives are linked together. But there is another truth...that every man IS an island. ...we speak not to reveal who we are but to CONCEAL who we are. Instead of showing ourselves as we truly are, we show ourselves as we believe others want us to be. We wear masks, and with practice we do it better and better, and they serve us well--except that it gets very lonely inside the mask, because inside the mask there is a person who both longs to be known and fears to be known.</i></span></blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">There is no stopping the momentum of this innovation train. I simply hope we pause often to consider how we might be unintentionally swept away by transformative technologies without understanding their soul-impact. I hope we find courage, when necessary, to brace ourselves against the swelling tide of pressure to live as a counterfeit self in a counterfeit world, and to embrace the raw, gritty, dirty world of created matter and humans as the flawed flesh and bone humans we are. </span></p>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-2766804803104085322023-07-30T08:25:00.001-05:002024-03-10T14:58:20.624-05:00The Outrage of Grace<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.25); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(134, 146, 163); color: #7e8a9a; text-size-adjust: auto; word-spacing: 1px;">I said grace cannot prevail until law is dead, until moralizing is out of the game. The precise phrase should be, until our fatal love affair with the law is over — until, finally and for good, our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed. As long as we leave, in our dramatizations of grace, one single hope of a moral reckoning, one possible recourse to salvation by bookkeeping, our freedom-dreading hearts will clutch it to themselves. And even if we leave none at all, we will grub for ethics that are not there rather than face the liberty to which grace calls us. Give us the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, and we will promptly lose its point by preaching ourselves sermons on Worthy and Unworthy Confession, or on The Sin of the Elder Brother. Give us the Workers in the Vineyard, and we will concoct spurious lessons on The Duty of Contentment or The Moral Aspects of Labor Relations.</span><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.25); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(134, 146, 163); color: #7e8a9a; text-size-adjust: auto; word-spacing: 1px;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.25); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(134, 146, 163); color: #7e8a9a; text-size-adjust: auto; word-spacing: 1px;">Restore to us, Preacher, the comfort of merit and demerit. Prove for us that there is at least something we can do, that we are still, at whatever dim recess of our nature, the masters of our relationships. Tell us, Prophet, that in spite of all our nights of losing, there will yet be one redeeming card of our very own to fill the inside straight we have so long and so earnestly tried to draw to. But do not preach us grace. It will not do to split the pot evenly at 4am and break out the Chivas Regal. We insist on being reckoned with. Give us something, anything: but spare us the indignity of this indiscriminate acceptance. --Robert Farrar Capon</span></span></p>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-44890794299469983012022-02-21T14:20:00.007-06:002022-02-21T14:20:43.646-06:00Beannacht: A Poem<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;">Beannacht</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Oxygen; font-size: x-small;"><i>by: John O'Donahue</i></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nRNjJ09T-VE" width="320" youtube-src-id="nRNjJ09T-VE"></iframe></p><p></p><p></p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 24.0pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">On the day when</span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">The weight deadens</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">On your shoulders</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">And you stumble,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">May the clay dance</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">To balance you.</span></div><o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p>
<p class="pw-post-body-paragraph" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1734" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: 24.0pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-break: break-word; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">And when your eyes</span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">Freeze behind</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">The grey window</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">And the ghost of loss</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">Gets into you,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">May a flock of colours,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">Indigo, red, green</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">And azure blue,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">Come to awaken in you</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">A meadow of delight.</span></div><o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p>
<p class="pw-post-body-paragraph" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1a43" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: 24.0pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-break: break-word; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">When the canvas frays</span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">In the currach of thought</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">And a stain of ocean</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">Blackens beneath you,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">May there come across the waters</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">A path of yellow moonlight</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">To bring you safely home.</span></div><o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p>
<p class="pw-post-body-paragraph" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="7295" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: 24.0pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-break: break-word; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">May th</span><span id="rmm" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">e</span><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"> nourishment
of the earth be yours,</span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">May the clarity of light be yours,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">May the fluency of the ocean be yours,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">May the protection of the ancestors be yours.</span></div><o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p>
<p class="pw-post-body-paragraph" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="47e0" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: 24.0pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 24.0pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-break: break-word; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">And so may a slow</span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Wind work these words</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Of love around you,</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">An invisible cloak</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">To mind your life.</span></span></div><span style="color: #292929;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p><br /><p></p>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-92193754190924018402021-11-13T02:15:00.000-06:002021-11-13T02:15:12.993-06:00Wedding Dessert Table<p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">September 12, 2021: Gabby Boeve & Kale Houghton at <a href="https://www.knottinghills.com/" target="_blank">Knotting Hills</a> in Pevely, MO</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5VNzHJLP6VIptwO8rzAx5zLRHstoeAcup0qBRJezqJoLu2ow38VOguZ3sgyt6ZeHTJSY68Q2hyphenhyphen8gDTAdj3B2Nd6TocFUnKD7C-Whrm0sxuD29lH7-VkY1nQcVsGCNSJ1RU-45TAgyVFw/s4032/IMG_9998.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5VNzHJLP6VIptwO8rzAx5zLRHstoeAcup0qBRJezqJoLu2ow38VOguZ3sgyt6ZeHTJSY68Q2hyphenhyphen8gDTAdj3B2Nd6TocFUnKD7C-Whrm0sxuD29lH7-VkY1nQcVsGCNSJ1RU-45TAgyVFw/w640-h480/IMG_9998.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiVgrmoUz71oEwMi3pvBkEYyVrbfc33AY0kUiR4Zzpz2NC8ZLcfOnC4rLseCJWBsDN35ymmXJKRoEgBRQKUWBaJPqcltpfdpg0UAYreBh_NWQY4mp79VEJ1UDsldvSAmbKi73Jia0LGDU/s4032/IMG_9997.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiVgrmoUz71oEwMi3pvBkEYyVrbfc33AY0kUiR4Zzpz2NC8ZLcfOnC4rLseCJWBsDN35ymmXJKRoEgBRQKUWBaJPqcltpfdpg0UAYreBh_NWQY4mp79VEJ1UDsldvSAmbKi73Jia0LGDU/w640-h480/IMG_9997.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Sources:</span></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">6-tier Acrylic <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jusalpha-Acrylic-Stand-cake-stand-dessert-6RF-small/dp/B016GZ58UE/ref=asc_df_B016GZ58UE/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=198079362228&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15070541099582651106&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9022878&hvtargid=pla-330044252639&psc=1" target="_blank">Donut Stand</a> </span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Crates with slats - <a href="https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/knagglig-box-pine-70292359/" target="_blank">IKEA Knagglig</a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Crates without slats - salvaged from a local wine shop</span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Platters and cake stands - items I already had, but most came from HomeGoods over the years</span></li></ul><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Floral Arrangement </span></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Greenery - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SHBVF66?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details" target="_blank">Eucalyptus garland 1</a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Greenery - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TYWW2QY?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details" target="_blank">Eucalyptus garland 2</a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Flowers and other floral - an assortment from Hobby Lobby</span></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075138LXF?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details" style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;" target="_blank">Glass Orbs</a><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"> - hung with fishing wire</span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.walmart.com/ip/Way-to-Celebrate-Flameless-LED-Tealights-White-Set-of-12/225324854?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0&wl13=805&adid=22222222420450916370&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=547331341345&wl4=aud-1308652556776:pla-293946777986&wl5=9022878&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=120643079&wl11=local&wl12=225324854&wl13=805&veh=sem_LIA&gclid=Cj0KCQiA4b2MBhD2ARIsAIrcB-SMgshyGx_Gq2l-GyPGFV1RhEX7GBsGmCxDUAxjlX7YekeoZhQA7h0aAlc5EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds" target="_blank">Tea Light Candles</a></span></li></ul><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The greenery is wrapped around a broom stick and fastened with zip ties. The flowers and leaves are just stuck into the greenery, except for the center succulent which is quite heavy. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">This arrangement was inspired by <a href="https://youtu.be/Ti5e3oWhea8" target="_blank">this tutorial over at ClaCali</a>. </span></div>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-21006257519105871372021-08-24T18:20:00.004-05:002021-08-24T18:20:15.594-05:00On Another's Sorrow<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">On Another's Sorrow</span></b></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>by: William Blake</i></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcOAQi-wQPox_BEZ8H5IB_Sba1zNYPAAubziNk0ujWSeONufaTc45tbxAcvLEHyFQTNgWqWk0XFpfPuDr7A3NAMefLBE01dDVV91Br7ud2envveDOs2sNHe4aWxH2QKqy1p1b8JRq8DBc/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="353" data-original-width="477" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcOAQi-wQPox_BEZ8H5IB_Sba1zNYPAAubziNk0ujWSeONufaTc45tbxAcvLEHyFQTNgWqWk0XFpfPuDr7A3NAMefLBE01dDVV91Br7ud2envveDOs2sNHe4aWxH2QKqy1p1b8JRq8DBc/" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Can I see another's woe</span></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: center;">And not be in sorrow too?</div></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Can I see another's grief</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">And not seek for kind relief?</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Can I see a falling tear</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And not feel my sorrow's share?</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Can a father see his child weep</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Nor be with sorrow filled?</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Can a mother sit and hear</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">An infant groan, and infant fear?</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">No, no! never can it be!</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Never, never can it be!</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And can He who smiles on all</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Hear the wren with sorrows small,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Hear the small bird's grief and care,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Hear the woes that infants bear,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And not sit beside the nest</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Pouring pity in their breast;</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And not sit the cradle near</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Weeping tear on infant's tear;</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And not sit both night and day</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wiping all our tears away?</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">O, no! never can it be!</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Never, never can it be!<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He doth give His joy to all;</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He becomes an infant small;</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He becomes a man of woe;</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He doth feel the sorrow too.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Think not thou canst sigh a sigh</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And thy Maker is not by.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Think not thou canst weep a tear</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And thy Maker is not near.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">O! He gives to us His joy</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">That our grief He may destroy;</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Till our grief is fled and gone</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He doth sit by us and moan.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-78897385109498549282020-10-20T21:22:00.003-05:002020-10-20T21:22:53.148-05:00A Litany at Atlanta<p></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtFy-ZvjILSuHW6pUQqFlAYM9a2Q6YnMJXitGCtNZmVFc2Zznt-AVr3Y51Nw0LxWF-w9QUqttivQ_dRhB3oA_vKKpamw7zp5kxXb1uOLjkrlfQ_Re8QkIsh61Tr0I34UL-ShvW4kXLZl0/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="1536" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtFy-ZvjILSuHW6pUQqFlAYM9a2Q6YnMJXitGCtNZmVFc2Zznt-AVr3Y51Nw0LxWF-w9QUqttivQ_dRhB3oA_vKKpamw7zp5kxXb1uOLjkrlfQ_Re8QkIsh61Tr0I34UL-ShvW4kXLZl0/" width="240" /></a></span></div><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">O
Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears
an-hungered in these fearful days--</span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Hear us, good Lord! <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Listen
to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery of in Thy
Sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy Heaven, O God, crying:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">We
are not better than our fellows, Lord; we are but weak and human men.
When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed, --curse them as
we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence
and weakness, to womanhood and home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">And
yet, whose is the deeper guilt? Who made these devils? Who nursed them in
crime and fed them on injustice? Who ravished and debauched their mothers and
their grandmothers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who bought and sold
their crime and waxed fat and rich on public iniquity?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Thou knowest, good God!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Is
this Thy Justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence and the
innocent be crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Justice, O Judge of men!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Wherefore
do we pray?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is not the God of the
Fathers dead?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have not seers seen in
Heaven’s halls Thine hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the black and
rolling smoke of sin, where all along bow bitter forms of the endless dead?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Awake, Thou that sleepest!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Thou
art not dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, through blazing
corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men, of women strong
and free—far from cozenage, black hypocrisy, and chaste prostitution of this
shameful speck of dust!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Turn again, O Lord; leave us not to perish in our sin!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">A
city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and
Black hate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Red was the midnight; clang,
crack, and cry of death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the
starts where church spires pointed silently to Thee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all this was to sate the greed of greedy
men who hide behind the veil of vengeance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Bend us Thine ear, O Lord!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">In
the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We stopped our ears and held our leaping
hands, but they – did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody
jaws: <i>Cease from Crime!</i> The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred
crimes while we do cure one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Turn again our captivity, O Lord.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Behold
this maimed and broken thing, dear God; it was an humble black man, who toiled
and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They told him: <i>Work</i> <i>and</i> <i>Rise!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He worked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Did this man sin?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nay, but
someone told how someone said another did –one whom he had never seen nor
known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet for that man’s crime this man
lieth maimed and murdered, his wife naked to shame, his children to poverty and
evil.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Hear us, O heavenly Father!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Doth
not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How long shall the mounting flood of innocent
blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes,
who do such deeds, high on Thine Altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn it in hell forever
and forever!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Bewildered
we are and passion-tossed, mad with the madness of a mobbed and mocked and
murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy throne, we raise our shackled
hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of
our dead mothers, by the very blood of Thy crucified Christ: What meaneth this?
Tell us the plan; give us the sign!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Keep not Thou silent, O God!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Sit
not longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb suffering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely Thou, too, art not white, O Lord, a
pale, bloodless, heartless thing!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Ah! Christ of all the Pities!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Forgive
the thought!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forgive these wild,
blasphemous words!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thou art still the
God of our black fathers and in Thy Soul’s Soul sit some soft darkenings of the
evening, some shadowings of the velvet night.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">But
whisper –speak –call, great God, show us the way and point us the path!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whither?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and without, the
liar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whither?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To death?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Amen!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Welcome dark sleep!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Whither?
To life? But not this life, dear God, not this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Let the cup pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is
that clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet
shudder lest we must –and it is red.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah!
God!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a red and awful shape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Selah!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">In
yonder East trembles a star<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Thy
Will, O Lord, be done!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Kyrie Eleison!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Lord,
we have done these pleading, wavering words.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">We
bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little children.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Our
voices sink in silence and in night.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Hear us, good Lord!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">In
night, O God of a godless land!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Amen!<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">In
silence, O Silent God.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light", sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Selah!</span></span></i></p><p></p>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-18450065155475509622020-10-04T17:20:00.002-05:002020-10-04T19:40:08.093-05:00The Hungering Dark<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDQ_z8cICW0kcNMLLQhjqZOnAWTxLvygtaQmCKJuzkNJP3G3WrXhYu-6bFLFSUd6FY61T-S5gsbB_aws03T4waw8q8nFyOKgqvUrGtAa-RU-jycnjLt3A4v5IIH0tAo52KQZW8W5Hr-bw/s4032/IMG_4518.HEIC" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDQ_z8cICW0kcNMLLQhjqZOnAWTxLvygtaQmCKJuzkNJP3G3WrXhYu-6bFLFSUd6FY61T-S5gsbB_aws03T4waw8q8nFyOKgqvUrGtAa-RU-jycnjLt3A4v5IIH0tAo52KQZW8W5Hr-bw/s320/IMG_4518.HEIC" /></a></div>When I grabbed this book from the shelf and added it to my beach pile, I noticed it was bookmarked where I had stopped reading it previously, and wondered why I didn't finish as I'm usually committed to doing so.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Today when I picked it up and glanced through my underlinings in the first half, I remembered why. It had been too much for me to take in at once. It would have been gluttonous to keep devouring Buechner's words when I was sated and couldn't actually absorb any more. There was nothing to be gained from continuing. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I had the appetite to finish it today. Buechner puts words to thoughts I have felt, but have been unable to articulate. The way he sees, processes, evaluates, and speaks into the world resonates deeply with me. I commend his meditative writings to you. (I specify his meditative writings because I have not yet read his novels, but hope to do so before too long. Per my friend Serena's recommendation, I'll likely begin with The Return of Ansel Gibbs.) </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">For your enjoyment, a brief passage from The Hungering Dark: Pontifex</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>"'No man is an island,' wrote Dr. Donne...'for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.' ...any man's death reminds us of our common destiny...our lives are linked together. But there is another truth...that every man IS an island. We sit in silence with one another, each of us reluctant to speak, for fear that he may sound like a fool. And beneath that there is of course the deeper fear...that maybe the truth of it is that indeed he is a fool. So either we do not speak, or we speak not to reveal who we are, but to CONCEAL who we are. Instead of showing ourselves as we truly are, we show ourselves as we believe others want us to be. We wear masks, and with practice we do it better and better, and they serve us well--except that it gets very lonely inside the mask, because inside the mask there is a person who both longs to be known and fears to be known. In this sense every man IS an island separated from every other man by fathoms of distrust and duplicity. </i></span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>"We need each other greatly, you and I, more than much of the time we dare to imagine, more than most of the time we dare to admit. Island calls to island across the silence and once, in trust , the real words come, a bridge is built and love is done - not sentimental, emotional love, but love that is pontifex: bridge-builder. The islands become an archipelago, a continent, a kingdom whose name is the Kingdom of God."</i></span></div></blockquote>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-69017847422337123782020-10-04T16:16:00.001-05:002020-10-04T16:19:38.452-05:00The Wounded Healer<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7HLvUJDq46faemjfxICm0okzPm7OeCkOWhH8F-OLOGlOGKGtgKE_1eLwKcfoiMYZLxl6G6VerjK_A-aglbR_Pc2oyUIzv3oOrtvyBg_frIkj4NDNvUIb2tXwufQggqMYtu4idOU4tmQc/s1194/IMG_4425.PNG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1194" data-original-width="783" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7HLvUJDq46faemjfxICm0okzPm7OeCkOWhH8F-OLOGlOGKGtgKE_1eLwKcfoiMYZLxl6G6VerjK_A-aglbR_Pc2oyUIzv3oOrtvyBg_frIkj4NDNvUIb2tXwufQggqMYtu4idOU4tmQc/s320/IMG_4425.PNG" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The modern generations, says Nouwen, feel themselves dislocated from history and in possession of a fragmented belief system in which nothing is "always and everywhere true and valid." Coupled with a lack of confidence that any life exists beyond death, these generations experience a deep, intolerable loneliness and hopelessness that lead to cries for revolution. Nouwen succinctly evaluates how this lack of rootedness affects the heart and mind, then suggests how Christians might frame the Good News in ways that it can be meaningfully heard. </div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">First, because these are inward generations, we have to be willing to explore the depths of our own inner life and articulate that experience as a means of establishing genuine connection...we must learn to "name the space where joy and sorrow touch each other." Second, compassion must become the essence and core of our leadership as they are seeking to exchange dominating authority for true fatherhood. And thirdly, in response to their inclination to revolt, we should act as contemplative critics who can stand outside of the narrative and speak critically while also infusing hope. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">This work can only be done through embodied presence marked by genuine personal concern and shared suffering, in a context of hospitality where "sufferings can be understood as wounds integral to our human condition" and as openings for healing and hope as we and they begin to understand that just as Christ's wounds were for the healing of the nations, so too our wounds are an occasion for the healing of others. </span></p>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-26138712329675234412020-10-04T16:04:00.001-05:002021-10-08T13:39:10.232-05:00Remembering<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZcrAjPtisgEbXewkhV_XVpzJzuSCmastnm05YC_WmNzGK0oNiILxOAzjLbDKER_HXiW_7y33RHa9fjQ4fUIda9oB67afObZ5Z_aj8hBxPy9mh2UjZD5kAB_ZT1mhEASpv00H4_SHcWXI/s1475/IMG_4436.PNG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1475" data-original-width="930" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZcrAjPtisgEbXewkhV_XVpzJzuSCmastnm05YC_WmNzGK0oNiILxOAzjLbDKER_HXiW_7y33RHa9fjQ4fUIda9oB67afObZ5Z_aj8hBxPy9mh2UjZD5kAB_ZT1mhEASpv00H4_SHcWXI/s320/IMG_4436.PNG" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">A very brief novel of Port William in which Andy Catlett wrestles with the loss of his hand. </span><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>"His right hand had been the one with which he reached out to the world and attached himself to it. When he lost his hand, he lost his hold. It was as though his hand still clutched all that was dear to him --and was gone."</i></span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Andy is literally and figuratively alone with his inner turmoil. One particular moment of that struggle comes while, away from his family and the farm, he roams the streets of San Francisco in the early morning hours: </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>"Andy is filled with a yearning toward this place. He imagines himself living here. He would have a small apartment up here on the hillside looking out over the bay. He would live alone and slowly he would come to know a peacefulness and gentleness in his own character, having nobody to quarrel with. He would have a job he could walk to in the morning and walk home from in the evening. It would be a job that would pay him well and give him nothing to worry about before he went to it or after he left it. In his spare time he would visit the museums. His apartment would be a place of refuge, quiet and orderly, full of beautiful things. But he reminds himself of himself. For the flaw in all that dream is himself, the little hell of himself alone." </i></span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">With his characteristic poetical poignance, Berry reveals the inner life of this very human character as no one else can do so well as he, I think. We become Andy as he gets lost in his loss and struggles to find his way back home.</span></p>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-29963234315122084622020-10-02T23:42:00.003-05:002020-10-04T05:17:32.995-05:00On Being Mortal<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5dzaa_HY7fkmMKUjg4ukaqkNcyTwbodCfkxi0wyYFXjojqaRf-rjoIgIxb8hc_vVr9dpWvRCp9XZM6pGGB1Zu1_556fVuLNAFQ0YKuJCbGp6m0aC4k6nevbCA7vXwbr-5jb3Rt0r_Uk/s730/AtulGawande_event.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="730" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5dzaa_HY7fkmMKUjg4ukaqkNcyTwbodCfkxi0wyYFXjojqaRf-rjoIgIxb8hc_vVr9dpWvRCp9XZM6pGGB1Zu1_556fVuLNAFQ0YKuJCbGp6m0aC4k6nevbCA7vXwbr-5jb3Rt0r_Uk/w640-h356/AtulGawande_event.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Scientific advances, says Dr. Gawande, have turned the process of aging and dying into a medical experience to be managed by healthcare professionals. </span></span><p></p><blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver's chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions...where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. </span></i></p></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Gawande deftly lays out the path by which we arrived at our current "continuum of care" model - the route from independent living to assisted living to nursing home care to dementia care. In theory, it's a nice enough idea but, in reality, it has created a medical environment focused on <i><u>safety</u> </i>and <i><u>survival</u> </i>that strips individuals of the dignity of autonomy, removing them from the known and familiar, which are so crucial for maintaining meaning and equilibrium as faculties begin to dull. They are left floundering in a world of strange confusion in which they have little if any control over the simplest daily routines such as when and what they eat, whether they get dressed and what they wear, whether they take a walk outdoors or stay in bed for half a day, whether they accept or reject a specific treatment. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Dr. Gawande provides a helpful service in tracing the history of and highlighting various efforts to shift our approach - and therefore our model - of eldercare, but his greatest service is in addressing the fundamental reasons why we are getting it wrong. </span></p><p></p><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant. The problem is that they have had almost no view at all. Medicine's focus is narrow...concentrating on repair of health, not sustenance of the soul. Yet...they are the ones who largely define how we live in our waning days. ...we have treated the trial of sickness, aging, and mortality as medical concerns. It's been an experiment in social engineering putting our fates in the hands of people valued for their technical prowess...and that experiment has failed. If safety and protection were all we sought in life, we might conclude differently. But because we seek a life of worth and purpose, and yet are routinely denied the conditions that might make it possible, there is no other way to see what modern society has done."</i></span></blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We unwittingly set our loved ones on a trajectory of unstoppable momentum of medical treatment that, ultimately, controls their narrative. We remove their agency, making decisions on their behalf and imposing treatments and solutions "for their own good" whether or not they want it. In so doing, we wrest from them the ability to author their own stories, the freedom to shape their lives in ways consistent with their character and loyalties. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life - to avoid becoming so diminished or dissipated or subjugated that who you are becomes disconnected from who you were or who you want to be.</i></span></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Our mortality is certain and for most of us, that end will be reached through a prolonged process of aging and dying. We don't get to control the circumstances of that process, but we ought to be able to choose what we do with those circumstances.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span>I commend to you </span><i>Being Mortal - Medicine and What Matters in the End </i><span>as a worthwhile read</span><span>. Dr. Gawande not only tracks where we've come from and where we are today, but he also proposes options for where we go from here, and how - with some thought and intention - we can transform the process of aging and dying into a more wholistic and human one. Because after all, he affirms, every life is a story and in stories, ENDINGS MATTER. </span></span></p><p></p>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-2087904954481453222020-10-02T20:42:00.001-05:002020-10-02T20:42:18.711-05:00The Bearded Man<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7j7B7pxd27U3t461Aq5L2cNyRI-IxWjIUYLd-wQfvmRN6NjPoDVN4lbMU7B1x_-Nz58Ry9orhxTBklShNYgo7HU9vgSANdMoH2Z4FjzeYLCVUVvdLDed6PTGZ4uzViLdRN-sr_lQwE7o/s2048/F07E0A8A-70C3-400F-84DF-58201F7AAB48.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7j7B7pxd27U3t461Aq5L2cNyRI-IxWjIUYLd-wQfvmRN6NjPoDVN4lbMU7B1x_-Nz58Ry9orhxTBklShNYgo7HU9vgSANdMoH2Z4FjzeYLCVUVvdLDed6PTGZ4uzViLdRN-sr_lQwE7o/s320/F07E0A8A-70C3-400F-84DF-58201F7AAB48.jpeg" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;">He had 2 of his own young children to entertain an</span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">d look out for, and with whom he was exploring the wonders of shore life. But within a very brief span, he became the Universal Father to about a dozen children who appeared to be ages 5 to 11...none of whom had a father present on the beach. They approached him at first to watch what he was doing with that net and bucket, but soon they wanted to participate. And every single one of them was not only allowed, but welcomed into the fray by this soft-spoken gentle giant.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Though it may not seem like a big deal, the truth is, not all would have been so open-hearted and hospitable. He had no obligation to engage with them, to answer and feed their sense of wonder, to invite them to join in the adventure, to even acknowledge them at all. Yet each one of those children - and probably their mothers too - were enriched by the kindness of a stranger acting as a benevolent father to the fatherless. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I was reminded how little it sometimes requires to propagate joy in the world, and how much I want to show up in the world like that Bearded Man. </span></div>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-9186464554304542222020-09-04T00:36:00.009-05:002021-10-08T13:46:31.537-05:00Well Done, Faithful Servant<div class="separator"><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioNY0XnQPe2WiAlw_KQ6rKfJdo8QEdjPf-u1538RRLxJ7QSeYUsEoCu0UKiCMi-fdU0Vj8yh_WZfqDTepomN_x2vESyoDpewhb5P7K6gI1EwLmsTlKlnuC-SCGNHFZHrJtHb6UOB2iJHQ/s564/grandma+%25282%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; font-family: arial; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="354" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioNY0XnQPe2WiAlw_KQ6rKfJdo8QEdjPf-u1538RRLxJ7QSeYUsEoCu0UKiCMi-fdU0Vj8yh_WZfqDTepomN_x2vESyoDpewhb5P7K6gI1EwLmsTlKlnuC-SCGNHFZHrJtHb6UOB2iJHQ/s320/grandma+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I slip my arms into the blue paper robe, let a stranger tie it in back, strap the N95 over fresh curls, and follow my young escorts through double security doors into the sterile hall. They motion toward the first door on the right. <i>So she's still in her old room.</i> I give thanks for that...at least something is familiar to her. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She's been in isolation for 12 days now based on a positive viral test result. Even though a subsequent test returned a negative result, she remains alone. The isolation seems to have stolen her will to live and she has taken "a turn for the worse" as we say. So much so, that she was placed under hospice care yesterday. This is the only reason I'm allowed in to see her...and I'm thankful for the unexpected blessing to be present with her one more time. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When we chatted last week, the conversation went much as it has for the past year...long pauses where she has nothing to say and where I struggle to engage her in a way that doesn't leave her frustrated by her failing memory. I'd reach for a name or topic until I hit one that struck a chord of recognition. Even then, the conversation was brief because the memory would evaporate as quickly as it had come. But that's ok...there were moments of connection and she'd always assure me that "it's so good to hear your voice" - a longtime familiar phrase of hers. Nothing much seemed out of the ordinary other than her parting words: "I hope you have a good life, Lori. And I hope you'll be good." I chuckled and cringed because those sweet but unfamiliar words felt very final. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">As we enter the room, my escorts assure me Gma has refused the dinner that sits untouched at her bedside, then they close the door and leave us. I am thankful for that too. No admonitions to keep my distance. No restrictions on time. No hovering to hear our "conversation." Just the two of us alone together.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I pull the institutional chair as close to her beside as I can. She lies quiet and largely unresponsive, either unaware of or unable to acknowledge my presence, so I strike up a rather lengthy one-sided conversation about summers spent living in her home, of finding her every single day without fail sitting on the couch with her Bible open, of discovering her marked up copy of The Letters of John Newton. When she passed that book on to me, I added my own markings to hers, reading it so many times it fell apart. Our lives are bound up together in that disheveled little paperback full of amazing graces. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We humans surmise much about what does and doesn't happen in our loved ones' final hours but, truth is, it remains - like so much in this earthbound experience - a mystery. <i>Are my words for her or for me?</i> I don't know. But I imagine what might comfort her if she can actually hear me. I reassure her that her 4 sons are strong and healthy and will be fine...that they love her and they love Jesus because she taught them to and showed them how. That of her 48 grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great great grandchildren, all who are old enough to know her, love and admire her. And of course, I remind her that her Sweet Daughter Riesa is already safe in Jesus' <a href="https://loriwaggoner.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-reluctant-eulogy.html" target="_blank">"big beautiful house"</a> and she will soon be joining her there in the presence of the Lord. I tell her it is OK to go now...to enter into that joy...that she has done everything she has been called to do, that her work here is finished, and that Jesus will receive her with open arms and "Well done, good and faithful servant." </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I recite Psalms of comfort and hope (23, 27, 91, 121) and sing old hymns, sometimes knowing, sometimes guessing at the ones she loves. Though she never fixes her gaze on me, there are moments I sense she is aware of my presence and hears. I am beyond grateful for those 2 hours. For the opportunity to hold her hands, to speak words of gratitude for her life, to kiss her forehead, and to say goodbye. It is a great and unexpected gift.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">As I doff my PPE at the exit, I'm reminded that though Grandma will soon shed her perishable earthly garment, she will be raised with an imperishable, immortal garment. "Therefore, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Give yourself fully to the work of the Lord because your labor is not in vain."<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Rest in Peace, Shirley Ann Waggoner. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.</span></div>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-8920037941284134722020-08-25T18:21:00.004-05:002020-08-25T21:20:21.206-05:00Doubt, Illusions, Pooh Bear, and Crowns<div class="separator"><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></p></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;">I've been questioning God more than usual the last two weeks. (Don't worry...he can take it. He's a wee bit bigger than my doubt.) The only way I know to express my angst is by outright asking him "why?" and "how long?" and "what are you trying to accomplish?" Recently, these questions have centered around the prolonging of my Grandma's life. She's 97. She's lived a beautiful painful life as a flawed saint and servant. She's tired. She's ready. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;">And..she's ALONE. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;">She's alone because we are afraid and illogical and silly. And because we fear Death, we separate those nearest it from all that is familiar and known...from the remaining fragments of their history that give meaning to their existence. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's true that I only visit my Grandma about 3 times a year - which always feels inadequate - but I haven't seen her for almost 7 months now, and it's too long. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;">Today, I was notified that she (and several other residents) tested positive for COVID (in spite of rigid adherence to the protocols). She's currently asymptomatic and if anyone is stubborn enough to kick this thing to the curb, it would be Shirley Waggoner. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"></span></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"><i>I am grateful for her health and long life.</i></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"><i>I am grateful that her memory is weak, so she may not feel our absence as fully as she otherwise would. </i></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"><i>I give thanks for psychotropic meds that probably make her feel pretty darn happy at times.</i></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"><i>I'm thankful that, today at least, she's Unworried. Unaware. And many of her basic needs are met. </i></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"><i>I'm thankful for wise words from Pooh Bear ;-)</i></span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"><i></i></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard ..." src="https://external-preview.redd.it/8qbAAYGFcJR0DyhQoHPnyXGV21CrJvb_eeIoYpTgNMY.jpg?auto=webp&s=b33888d87eea4c20103c51af5d6fd70b954d16a8" style="text-align: justify;" /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">But I'm also angry. Not punch-the-wall-angry, but sad-angry. </span><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">I'm sad that, whether or not COVID takes her, THIS is how it ends for her and for us. This madness of fear. This illusion that we can control something we can't even see and clearly don't understand. I suspect that the Lord who sits in the heavens chuckles much like we would at a toddler who thinks he can perform the impossible. "Awww....isn't that cute?" But I digress...</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;">Grandma didn't answer my call today, but had the wherewithal to listen to my voicemail and call me back. She called me by name and even seemed to know who I was, though she didn't recognize my sons - or even her own - when I named them. She sounded "chipper" and described her monotonous days and nursing home food as "not so bad!" </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">It was a sweet, brief chat that ended with words that undid me. "I love you, Lori. I hope you have a good life.</span><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">" It sounded like goodbye.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">She has run a good race. She has kept the faith. </span><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">If we can't at least share a final hug, I hope her finish line is near. </span><span style="font-family: Oxygen;"> </span><span style="font-family: Oxygen;">She will wear the Crown of Righteousness with the dignity befitting a daughter of The King. </span><span style="font-family: Oxygen;"> </span></span></p>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-25392774635023602962020-06-24T15:15:00.003-05:002020-08-25T21:11:20.100-05:00Through New Eyes: Part 1 <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPukf4tjimPjqrit5BUqdNS6JnXc6EFUKV3t0BaRK7buRiprKxQFGtUxVTWCzlUTS5CeXmbQ5AjBtYppCBJAdYKaNOdtbx_2xZXIBRPipKElWM9xbo4q8l7NAGDnlsS2LlX7hyphenhyphenA8fPhW0/s1920/through+new+eyes+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="657" data-original-width="1920" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPukf4tjimPjqrit5BUqdNS6JnXc6EFUKV3t0BaRK7buRiprKxQFGtUxVTWCzlUTS5CeXmbQ5AjBtYppCBJAdYKaNOdtbx_2xZXIBRPipKElWM9xbo4q8l7NAGDnlsS2LlX7hyphenhyphenA8fPhW0/w625-h216/through+new+eyes+%25282%2529.jpg" title="Through New Eyes" width="625" /></a></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">There was a time not so long ago when I would have rolled my eyes at the current conversation around racism. It pains me to admit that, but it's the truth. It wasn't because I hated black people or thought their lives didn't matter, but because my view of the world, my knowledge, my framework, and my experiences were even more limited than they are today. Should I be ashamed of that? I don't know...my life experiences were what they were and had left me without any context for understanding. </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">Those experiences are STILL limited. The framework is still being built. I have not arrived. But my knowledge is growing, and I have a lens of new experiences through which I can see more clearly and listen with greater empathy. </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">So, what exactly changed? How did I move from a place of indifference and scorn to a place of interest and engagement? There's only 1 answer to that question...and shocking as it may be, it was not through a piece of profound journalism, or an activist's speech, or some compelling political platform, or even through a social media rant. I KNOW?!?! What else IS there??</span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">The change in me came through RELATIONSHIPS. Plain and simple. Real relationships with real people.</span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">The first of those was a friendship that developed only 6 years ago with a gentleman I'll call W. W was a smart, articulate, funny, insightful, and deeply caring coworker. Because he was also full of confidence - ok for real...he's a retired Air Force pilot so I might as well call it what it was - because he was full of <i>swagger,</i> he wasn't put off by my strong personality and we became fast friends. </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">As you may recall, 6 years ago (2014) brought us Michael Brown and soon after, Colin Kaepernick (and other very public racially-charged incidents, but these were the two we talked of most). For the first time in my life I had a black friend who wasn't afraid of my very sheltered white perspective. Nor did he write me off as a lost cause simply because I didn't "get it." Because we liked, loved, and trusted each other enough to reveal our truths and to hear each other, I could ask blunt questions without fear of offending, and I could listen to him because his experiences, his life, and his actions were 100% aligned with his words. Those words worked on me...hell...they STILL work on me today. I'm still changing because of his words...words that I couldn't truly hear from a stranger but COULD hear from a friend. As much as I imagine my perspective pained him, W was winsome and thoughtful in challenging me. If he had shouted angry words in my face or demeaned me in his refutations, I'd be the same person today I was then. Relationship doesn't allow us to shout one another down...distance does. Relationship demands that we speak with regard for the other's history and humanity...screens allow us to depersonalize the conversation. Relationship demands patience. My perspective didn't change overnight, but W planted seeds that with time and watering and light, have begun to grow and produce fruit. </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">The next influence was a set of relationships that began in 2017 when I worked for a brief, but impactful, time at the Christian Activity Center in East St. Louis. The 30-year veteran leader at this youth center was a dedicated man who immediately began schooling me on the history of East STL. It became abundantly clear that if I wanted to work effectively in this atmosphere, I had to listen to, read, watch, and otherwise immerse myself in the history of this people and their place. The desire to grow in these genuine relationships sent me on an educational pursuit to connect these beautiful, resilient people to their tortured past and painful present. </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">That education peeled the scales from my eyes and collapsed walls around my heart. It demanded that I no longer avert my eyes from the ugly truths of how this city, these neighborhoods, these former "Samuel Gompers" homes, and their inhabitants have come to be what they are today. In this process of education, I began to see for the first time how SYSTEMS create and/or sustain prejudice. I began to see how we build systems that inherently favor me and mine, whether unconsciously (due to limited perspective or our natural bent toward self-preservation) or consciously (with the known intent of holding back, stopping, or eliminating the progress of The Other); whether overtly (by crushing him to the ground with burdens too heavy to bear) or covertly (by ensuring he feels small and unworthy of questioning the way things are). </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">I began to see how my old ways of thinking were not only naive, but misguided and passively reinforcing the brokenness. I began to understand the power of symbols in honoring the painful narratives of the past to the hurt and detriment of my brothers and sisters...my neighbors. I had to start letting go of long-held ideas and assumptions and BELIEFS. My worldview had to be dismantled. As I've addressed previously, that is always an uncomfortable place. Certainty *feels* much safer, but living in untruth is never a safe place to be, no matter how secure it FEELS. </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another change happened in my life leading up to the development of these relationships. I went through an experience of deep suffering that included injustices perpetrated by a church system in which men are valued more highly than women. (I have been largely silent on this, because until recently, I still cared how I was perceived and was afraid of the consequences...I am no longer bound by those fears. I also know these men are adept at justifying - even moralizing - their unjust actions, and in doing so have no qualms about manipulating partial truths into convincing arguments that are easily digested by those who need to believe them. But distance and long years of wrestling have freed me to see clearly and name actions for what they were/are.) The point: experiencing systemic injustice which not only sustains but guards the status quo, and watching those with authority circle the wagons to protect existing power structures and control the narrative, not only opened my eyes to the REALITY of unjust systems, but also allowed me to enter the arena with a new kind of empathy I may not otherwise have known. I suppose I owe a debt of gratitude to those men who inadvertently gave me a beautiful gift...the gift of open eyes which then led to an open heart. Pain and rejection be damned - I wouldn't trade that for anything. </span><i>(note added: for the sake of people I love, let me clarify that this did not involve Covenant Presbyterian Church!)</i></span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">While that experience informed my current viewpoint, the bottom line is, it probably would not have not have translated in application to racial injustice APART FROM THE RELATIONSHIPS I mentioned above. The experience was a *gateway* that put me on a path to hearing with understanding. </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">For my friends who are in the place I was a few years ago: I still have "what about" questions that remain unanswered to this day, and the more I listen to loud public voices who address these questions, the more conflicted I become ...UNTIL, I talk to real everyday people in real everyday life...UNTIL I reengage in RELATIONSHIP. The voices that matter most are those without a larger agenda...and I mean ANY larger agenda! I don't just mean the Marxists or the social justice warriors, I also mean the Constitutionalists and the self-reliance warriors. These voices want us to choose a side, support a cause, click a link, bolster a movement, or dig our heels in where we've always stood and call it principled conviction. ALWAYS ask yourself what the speaker, organization, or movement stands to gain from his/her position, even when - no...ESPECIALLY when - their position matches your own. </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">You see, when the conversation turns ugly and everyone is hurling hatred and anger, it's tempting to abandon the conversation, to throw our hands in the air and give up. It's too hard or too violent or not getting us anywhere except further away from each other. BUT...when I turn off the voices "out there" and I talk to Joe Coworker, his interest is not an ideology. His interest isn't power or money. His interest is his own and his children's dignity...their ability to move through the world as FULLY human...without judgement, assumptions, suspicion, scorn, or contempt. He simply wants the privilege of being given the benefit of the doubt. That is a conversation I cannot abandon...nor do I want to. The voice of Joe Coworker grounds me and focuses the conversation where it ought to be. It wrests it from the sphere of public discourse marked by incivility, to the very personal realm of loving my flesh-n-blood, looking-me-in-the-eyes neighbor. </span></div>
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<span face="" style="font-size: large;">I firmly believe the only life-altering way forward is not education, civil discourse, politics, voting, protests, or laws - these can all be helpful pieces of the puzzle, but real change will only grow out of RELATIONSHIPS. It's in the daily, intentional, unspectacular, ordinary, unsung sharing of ourselves with one another; the willingness to reveal ourselves; to see, hear, and embrace The Other with open hearts; and to move forward together in brotherly love.</span><span face="" style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-16150772263850688812020-05-22T10:08:00.003-05:002020-06-19T12:16:21.236-05:00Everything Is Going To Be All Right<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Everything Is Going To Be All Right</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Author: Derek Mahon, Selected Poems 2012</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Recitation: Andrew Scott</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">How should I not be glad to contemplate</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">There will be dying, there will be dying, </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">but there is no need to go into that.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The poems flow from the hand unbidden</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">and the hidden source is the watchful heart.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The sun rises in spite of everything</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">and the far cities are beautiful and bright.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I lie here in a riot of sunlight</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">watching the day break and the clouds flying.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Everything is going to be all right.</span></div>
<br />Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-83906748277789768602020-05-18T19:18:00.000-05:002020-05-18T19:20:40.720-05:00The Myth of "The Science" <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglxdnMZtsL5zdRcchTTRujJ5Esbcque-kj3rMYysfsd9PgRhUe86GzWvsi1Da9aANGy0esjBcAkevlXM3OX2OWuIaLHcA2rrBrmgw6VuKgBxNlUeXYSWQBrM2PGZhDDwtUcsaM9NJ6l4M/s1600/theory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="1600" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglxdnMZtsL5zdRcchTTRujJ5Esbcque-kj3rMYysfsd9PgRhUe86GzWvsi1Da9aANGy0esjBcAkevlXM3OX2OWuIaLHcA2rrBrmgw6VuKgBxNlUeXYSWQBrM2PGZhDDwtUcsaM9NJ6l4M/s400/theory.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">There is no such thing as "The
Science." Science is not Facts and
it is not Truth. Science is a continuous
series of inquiries that are both prompted and aided by observation,
experimentation, and analysis. The
gathered information is subsequently interpreted through a grid of
perspectives, experiences, and assumptions (both acknowledged and
unacknowledged), and influenced by the purpose of the inquiry. This exercise of inquiry sometimes leads to
the formation of a hypothesis. When a
hypothesis is supported over time through repeatable results by inquirers with
differing perspectives, experiences, assumptions, and motives, the scientist
may propose a Theory. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">It seems to me that we have begun to speak of
science as something altogether different from the description above which, as
recently as my childhood, was a commonly shared understanding (perhaps not the
exact definition which is expressed in my own words, but the foundational
elements). While I would expect
hypotheses and theories to be constantly morphing, I would not expect the definition of the
discipline itself to change, nor would I expect new theories to quickly
displace long-standing ones. Yet we've
moved away from science as inquiry and theory toward science as absolute,
authoritative dogma. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">In our disputatious time, we wield the
"ignoring the science" sword as if science is a codified, agreed
upon, permanent Fact or Truth...which, of course, it is not. One very obvious demonstration of that in our
current climate is that a variety of scientists whose bodies of work are held in
high esteem, are drawing disparate conclusions about the nature of The Illness
and our responses to it. There are
limited explanations on how this could be.
Either the variables of observation, experimentation, and analysis are
producing conflicting data, or the grid through which the data is being
interpreted, or the purpose of the inquiry are different. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">I find it particularly curious how a person
might exalt the opinion of one body of physicians or scientists as
authoritative while labeling those who exalt the opinion of an opposing body of
physicians or scientists as "ignoring the science." Both sides are educated. Both have inherent biases. Both have varying motivations. Both have expertise. Neither has a corner on Fact or Truth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">If it wouldn't be
"better," it would at least be more honest if we ALL acknowledged that
not only we, but those voices (learned and otherwise) that resonate with us are
not purely objective, and "The
Science" is merely informed speculation and not a justification for
shame-based insults.</span></div>
Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-22813298403198581962020-04-21T10:54:00.001-05:002024-03-17T23:03:20.635-05:00Reconciliation in Shakespeare<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9AEoM_cHNuMCIy7IPNcJaj_SDKlImj3oLqorLQ_0OundBQPkeBMbtUcGONk5yMG2Etw9NkgYM6NdgZnJptEdYOvuQ3GkNEShn07Praqsbxp91lmex6vQjwALMv0S3jhVHcQ5bBpHTJp4/s1600/reconciliation.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="1329" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9AEoM_cHNuMCIy7IPNcJaj_SDKlImj3oLqorLQ_0OundBQPkeBMbtUcGONk5yMG2Etw9NkgYM6NdgZnJptEdYOvuQ3GkNEShn07Praqsbxp91lmex6vQjwALMv0S3jhVHcQ5bBpHTJp4/s640/reconciliation.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;">Several of Shakespeare's plays "end with elaborate scenes of reconciliation that all of them are designed from the first act to bring about. This is to say, reconciliation is their subject. And what happens in these scenes is no sorting out of grievances, no putting of things right. Justice as that word is normally understood has no part in them. They are about forgiveness that is unmerited, unexpected, unasked, unconditional. In other words, they are about grace." </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="font-family: Oxygen; font-size: large;">--Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things </span></div>
Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-4655675542537724502020-04-11T19:51:00.001-05:002020-04-11T19:51:53.134-05:00<div style="text-align: left;">
<img alt="Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, 1504, engraving (fourth state), 25.1 x 20 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)" src="https://cdn.kastatic.org/ka-perseus-images/2cc2e320701a9ecb8d6e1881376e1c065fafa789.jpg" /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">If prayers</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Could alter high decrees, I to that place</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Would speed before thee, and be louder heard,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That on my head all might be visited...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">To me committed and by me expos'd.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But rise. Let us no more contend, nor blame</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere, but strive</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In offices of love how we may light'n</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Each other's burden in our share of woe,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Since this day's death denounc'd, if aught I see,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Will prove no sudden, but a slow-pac'd evil,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A long day's dying, to augment our pain...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">--Milton, Paradise Lost</span><br />
<br />Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-50945352217487489222020-04-07T23:29:00.006-05:002024-02-18T13:31:48.685-06:00Unbinding the Fist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-BEZAv665DjWkubbZh-JWcWxD_ZosOEwUG49dCZzBH7_OtNP1hBwUBcfeazfZmMKWkoCbTKSVSb2Mf7hQG_jq1a_GhQN-zcDVul2Rm3z2jyI_Fh6gWIynju_vL1dvQJb1aOKfyEZk3bc/s1600/Coronavirus_H.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="1160" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-BEZAv665DjWkubbZh-JWcWxD_ZosOEwUG49dCZzBH7_OtNP1hBwUBcfeazfZmMKWkoCbTKSVSb2Mf7hQG_jq1a_GhQN-zcDVul2Rm3z2jyI_Fh6gWIynju_vL1dvQJb1aOKfyEZk3bc/s320/Coronavirus_H.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">We ran headlong into
hiding...out of cowardice. Some feared
The Illness, others the stigma or political suicide of not following the
international trend. Nevertheless, we dove in with no real proof that our
measures would actually make a difference (this was NOT the strategy of those
countries who have been most successful in stemming the tide), and we did so
with little regard for how many people we were hurting in our attempt to help
others and, above all, without a sound exit strategy. Actually, we don't even have an UNsound exit
strategy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">In our distorted
belief that when trouble arises, it is the federal government’s duty to DO
SOMETHING to extract us from the pains of life in a broken world, we pined,
harangued, bashed, and begged until they responded...some reluctantly and some
all too readily. They didn't create the
virus, but their response created more problems that they then felt compelled
to fix.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">Their “fix” has
strapped us with additional astronomical generational debt. And it’s motivated by politicians' own fear,
greed, and desperate grasps for power and relevance. (I’m not assuming none
have a genuine concern for human well-being, but if they do, their solutions
create nothing more than a short term feeling of well-being...). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">Their “fix” also
builds on a foundational assumption that nothing could be worse than an
economic downturn (or implosion). We all know that anything built on a faulty
foundation will not stand the test of time.
The Families First and CARES Acts are fraught with contradictory
initiatives (even the NAMES are intended to manipulate how we feel about these
additional 975 pages of legislation...No really...975 pages. I know this b/c I've read much of it.) They
attempt to sustain small business by offering forgivable loans of 2.5x eight weeks
of payroll if these businesses keep their people on the books - while
simultaneously increasing unemployment benefits by $600/week (which just so
happens to come out to $15/hour...coincidence?
I think not.) In so doing, they
make it impossible for those same small businesses to keep their $10-13/hour folks employed. After all, why
work for $10 when you can NOT work for $15 + a percentage of your lost
wages? The only way to get all these
unemployed folks back to work is for employers to raise their wage to $15/hour.
When will we learn that politics is a world powered by power where
strengthening that grip demands weakening human resolve through magnanimous
acts that erode dignity and fray the fabric of self-reliance? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">Side note 1: I have
never understood the hypnotic appeal of raising the minimum wage. The *intent* of shortening the gap between
the wealthy and the not wealthy SOUNDS good, but this legislation results in
the raised price of goods thereby negating any benefit of that
"raise." It doesn't bring the
upper and lower classes closer together.
Only one thing will bridge that gap: changed hearts. Hearts at both ends of the spectrum that shed
their entitlements and care more for one another than for personal rights and
personal prosperity.<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">Side note 2: Our
debt-based economy is a house of cards that must inevitably topple. When our attempts to artificially prop it up
finally fail, it will be painful - perhaps devastatingly so - but it will
create the possibility for something new founded on principles of creativity
and community rather than excessivity, consumption, and wealth generation. (Don't hear what I'm NOT saying: wealth is
not evil...UNLESS, of course, it is motivated by greed and acquired on the
backs of the oppressed. That's not a
socialistic, anti-capitalist mindset. I
believe it is the economy of the Trinitarian God who shares continually with us
out of his abundance. He shares his
creativity, his counsel, his material wealth, his everything with us. His generosity is fueled by his self-giving
nature, not the acquisition of power over us.
His intent is our flourishing, not our groveling dependence.<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">Side note 3: It is
perhaps un-American to say so, but I do not believe self-reliance is, in and of
itself, a virtue. The independent spirit
we so admire (and of which I have more than my fair share!) when coupled with
self-focus, becomes insidious. Taking
care of me and mine and the rest of you fend for yourselves, is no more
admirable than sitting idly with hands open, demanding they be filled. Self-reliance, when fueled by the desire not
to burden others with my needs and when
tempered by a desire to generously bolster those whose burden is overly heavy,
both confirms dignity in the self and creates bonds of love in the community. And, I think, reaches toward a truly
Christian idea of communal life.<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">Side note 4: I am not
an unequivocal apologist for capitalism.
So, while I'm critical of the stay-at-home orders partly because of the
economic implications, it's not because I believe that economic prosperity, as
we view it today, is the ultimate good. Shalom is the ultimate societal
good...but that's a whole other topic! I
also suspect that a complete economic meltdown could lead to a simplification -
a resetting, if you will - of our perceived material needs. It might force an examination of our
priorities, our desires, our wantonness, our way of
devouring-because-we-can. Even though
that is my perspective, I see little wisdom in shutting everything down. Singapore kept life moving while making
strategic, rational, data-based decisions on how to shield the most vulnerable
while keeping the rest of society functioning.
That was a loving approach. <o:p></o:p></span></blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span face=""Segoe UI Light",sans-serif" style="line-height: 107%;">Back to the issue at
hand: Our Response to The Illness. </span><span face=""Segoe UI Light", sans-serif"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">Our collective
response appears emotional and reactionary.
We are basing our actions on public perception of risk and data that is
skewed by multiple factors, including a very limited data set and our choice to
present the data in the most sensationalized way. We choose # of cases and # of deaths. Why?
Because they present the most terrifying picture that then justifies our
decisions? We could just as easily present
the % of population who have been tested, % of those returning a positive, % of
untested population, % of deaths among those without pre-existing
conditions. We could frame our
presentation with adjustments for population health, adjustments for
lifestyles, etc., etc., etc. We could present
the data in all kinds of ways, but we choose the most dramatic...WHY? To keep people tuned in and to keep them
begging for solutions? Because we're too
lazy to unearth better options? Because
we're not systems thinkers? I don't KNOW
why, so I speculate. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">In the meantime, our
reactions have left those who are dying to do so apart from those who love
them. Somehow we protect our healthcare
workers enough to allow them to be in the hospitals day in and day out, but we
cannot protect family members well enough to attend the bedsides of the
dying? I cannot find the sense in this
no matter how hard I try. We are NOT out
of PPE...every day in the grocery store, I see average citizens galore wearing
surgical masks and N95s! How can we not
provide protected means for visits to happen? In an age marked by agility,
creativity, ingenuity...how have we not found a way to dignify the dying with
presence...mere presence??? It's a grievous choice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">Another aspect that
baffles me is our seeming inability to think clearly, even consistently, within
our own declared belief systems. Our flexible
moral compass allows us to pick and choose what we believe according to the
zeitgeist or emotion of the moment. If I
adhere to a survival of the fittest theory, why would I not view this as the
inevitable sloughing off of those too weak to survive? It is nature doing what nature does and
strengthening the human race. Should I
not be at peace with it, instead of panicked by it? If I'm ok with a mother and doctor deciding
which fetal life is worth saving, why am I freaked out about a doctor deciding
which COVID patient does and doesn't get a ventilator? Why is that life decision more weighty in one
situation than the other? How is that
decided? I ask a dozen questions along these lines and across the spectrum of
beliefs...including my own! Are we reacting consistently with our dogma? If not, why not?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">And then, of course,
we have a smorgasbord of conspiracy theorists positing how this whole virus was
concocted to enact someone's agenda. I
don't lend credence to any of them (not b/c I think no one is capable of such
heinous acts. History clearly proves
otherwise...I just don't believe that's what has happened here); however, I am
absolutely enough of a cynic to believe that many opportunists have seized this
to advance their personal, corporate, political, religious, or other agenda.
Fearful people are pliable people. And pliable people in the hands of
powerful people can be fashioned into almost any image.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">So...what is the
point of this whole rambling rant? I'm
not entirely sure. It's not to imply
that The Illness is nothing. It's not to
be an armchair quarterback suggesting that I know which plays should have been
called. I suppose it's primarily a conversation with myself. It's my way of processing thousands of
swirling thoughts about how we arrived at this place...how we lost the
resilience of our fathers and grandfathers.
(I mean...we've read The Hiding Place, yes? And Unbroken?
And The Long Walk?) How our lives
of ease have made us soft...how our ways of anesthetizing death have made its
horror foreign to us. How the relative
nonchalance with which we navigate, not only our daily lives, but also the
globe, leave us shocked at our sudden immobility...how our running to and fro
makes us kick against the stillness. And
how...HOW...do we bring forth the best of our individual and collective selves
in this strange place we now inhabit? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">How do the fearful
understand the stoic? Those who run toward danger with noble resolve understand
those who shrink from it? Those who
shift with agility understand those who stubbornly fight change? Those who believe in the goodness of shared
resources understand those who defend the goodness of autonomy? Those who laugh understand those who
weep? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; line-height: 107%;">I suppose
understanding is found first in not fearing one another's perspectives. By listening to and dignifying my fellow
man. By lending credibility to his
thoughts and feelings as arising from his particular experiences (which are
likely different than mine). By speaking
my own position, not from a desire to intimidate or to assert my superiority,
but from a desire to genuinely engage.
By reining in my propensity to judge, to condescend, to berate any
perspective other than my own. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Segoe UI Light",sans-serif" style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is hard
work. But it is the hard work of loving
my neighbor...and is that not the great healing balm we all need? Whether our efforts to slow The Illness work
or don't...whether we suffer long and deep or whether some great discovery
springs forth to snuff it out. Whatever
happens, the best salve for our loss, our grief, our anger, our suspicion, our
arrogance, our stubbornness, is really rather mundane - to unbind our fists and
extend our hands to serve and love one another well.</span><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"></o:p></span></p></div>
Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-15883650936080704092019-09-01T21:37:00.000-05:002019-09-01T21:37:07.656-05:00Art Imitates...Art?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">These elegant live reenactments of Caravaggio masterpieces are nothing short of brilliant:</span><br />
<br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nIeyulbiB0A" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">:00 The
Entombment of Christ<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">:45 Mary Magdalene
in Ecstasy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">:52 Crucifixion
of St. Peter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">1:13 The
Beheading of John the Baptist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">1:20 Judith
Beheading Holofernes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">1:39
Flagellation of Christ<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2:07 The
Martyrdom of St. Matthew<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2:19
Annunciation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2:30 Rest on the
Flight to Egypt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">2:55 Narcissus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">3:05 The Raising
of Lazarus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">3:24 St. Francis
of Assisi in Ecstasy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">3:40 Bacchus</span></div>
<br />Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-42605504095659589342019-08-09T00:26:00.001-05:002021-04-17T20:25:02.240-05:00Man & Beast<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">What constitutes the fundamental difference between man and beast? Is there a single differentiating characteristic between them or are they essentially the same? Does our perception of man as a higher creature grow out of hubris rather than truth?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71VG6yRpqZL._SX425_.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><img alt="Image result for michelangelo's creation of adam" border="0" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71VG6yRpqZL._SX425_.jpg" /></span></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Decades of research indicate that animals may in some sense be <u>RATIONAL</u> creatures - that is, they seem to learn in a way that may not be merely Pavlovic; they're clearly <u>EMPATHIC </u>as <a href="https://youtu.be/LJBVtoN1wMM" target="_blank">this video of a dog watching The Lion King </a>demonstrates; they are unarguably <u>INTUITIVE</u> as they anticipate storms, earthquakes, seizures, labor, and even illness well before we do; they're <u>COMMUNICATIVE</u> with both their own and other species in a variety of tongues/languages. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">It remains up for debate whether "decisions" - such as where a beaver builds his dam and the specifications of that dam are driven by simple instinct or whether some level of evaluation and reasoning are involved. Most pet owners I know assign a wide range of human attributes to their favorite companions. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">However, I have yet to encounter convincing evidence that beasts can engage in <b>complex </b>reasoning and language. It's also unclear whether animals experience a sense of wonder, or longing, or humor. Do they create from an intrinsic motivation other than need? They don't appear to create music, poetry, art, technology, or any other thing that isn't strictly utilitarian. The useful things they make are often beautiful, but are not created for the sake of beauty.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">I suggest that the differentiating capacities between man and animal, may stem from a single characteristic: <b><u>IMAGINATION</u></b>. From imagination springs the possibility of inquiry, scientific theory, argumentation, a <a href="https://youtu.be/j3lH_Tevw5o" target="_blank">Bach Sonata</a>, a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtHistory/comments/73m1br/the_incredulity_of_st_thomas_caravaggio_oil_1603/" target="_blank">Caravaggio masterpiece</a>, <a href="https://loriwaggoner.blogspot.com/2016/08/holy-sonnet-1-donne.html" target="_blank">Donne's Holy Sonnets</a>, <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/loriwag2552/feminine-fashion/" target="_blank">infinite varieties in fashion</a>, along with dozens of other activities and millions of artifacts that belong solely to the human realm.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Apart from imagination, there is no such thing as <a href="https://youtu.be/ipP-z_koTZs" target="_blank">Open Bionics</a>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Apart from imagination, we would have no Star Wars.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Apart from imagination, there is no <a href="https://www.hagiasophia.com/upload/1553256075_262-900x604.jpg" target="_blank">Hagia Sophia</a>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Apart from imagination, <a href="https://youtu.be/pkOqi7Du3Og" target="_blank">Gatekeeper </a>would not exist.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Apart from imagination, there would be no <a href="https://www.oliostl.com/" target="_blank">Olio</a>.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">I could do this all day, but I'm sure you get the idea! We humans take our creative acts for granted because those acts are inherent in who we are. Think of all the daily activities that you engage in that animals never do - even such routine activities as getting dressed and preparing a meal. You might be surprised how long that list grows. Then consider how many of those activities are, at root, works of imagination. Even behaviors we typically think of as "rational" (such as planning a meeting), require us to anticipate, and anticipation is an act of the imagination. </span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Imagination fuels the possibility of even our simplest routines! But why would man be the unique possessor of it among the creatures? I believe the reason is made clear in one of my unalterable tenants of faith: Imago Dei.</span><br />
<span face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/itCweaPGYQRYVeSGbNgqf9-1200-80.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="NASA Robot Photo Reproduces Michelangelo Painting | Space" border="0" height="160" src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/itCweaPGYQRYVeSGbNgqf9-1200-80.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;">Man is a creature of imagination because he is made in the image of his own Creator from whose imagination was born every reality we see, hear, feel, smell, and touch. The Mind of the Maker is infinitely creative; therefore man, the sole creature designed to mirror him, imitates that Maker by bringing his own creative imaginings into existence. </span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-58711455147403707222019-07-26T21:54:00.002-05:002019-07-26T21:54:24.070-05:00Why Work?<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why Work? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>by: Dorothy Sayers</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://voegelinview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Dorothy-L.-Sayers-e1480006131475.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for dorothy sayers" border="0" src="https://voegelinview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Dorothy-L.-Sayers-e1480006131475.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have already, on a previous occasion, spoken at some length on the subject of Work and
Vocation. What I urged then was a thoroughgoing revolution in our whole attitude to
work. I asked that it should be looked upon, not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone
for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should
find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should,
in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and
that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of
doing well a thing that is well worth doing. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It may well seem to you – as it does to some of my acquaintances – that I have a sort of
obsession about this business of the right attitude to work. But I do insist upon it, because
it seems to me that what becomes of civilization after this war is going to depend
enormously on our being able to effect this revolution in our ideas about work. Unless we
do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from
the appalling squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning
for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in
a social system based upon Envy and Avarice. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep
production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house
built upon sand. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is interesting to consider for a moment how our outlook has been forcibly changed for
us in the last twelve months by the brutal presence of war. War is a judgment that
overtakes societies when they have been living; upon ideas that conflict too violently
with the laws governing the universe. People who would not revise their ideas
voluntarily find themselves compelled to do so by the sheer pressure of the events which
these very ideas have served to bring about. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of
thinking and living bring about intolerable situations; and whichever side may be the
more outrageous in its aims and the more brutal in its methods, the root causes of conflict
are usually to be found in some wrong way of life in which all parties have acquiesced,
and for which everybody must, to some extent, bear the blame. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is quite true that false Economics are one of the root causes of the present war; and one
of the false ideas we had about Economics was a false attitude both to Work and to the
good produced by Work. This attitude we are now being obliged to alter, under the
compulsion of war – and a very strange and painful process it is in some ways. It is
always strange and painful to have to change a habit of mind; though, when we have
made the effort, we may find a great relief, even a sense of adventure and delight, in
getting rid of the false and returning to the true. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Can you remember – it is already getting difficult to remember – what things were like
before the war? The stockings we bought cheap and threw away to save the trouble of
mending? The cars we scrapped every year to keep up with the latest fashion in engine
design and streamlining? The bread and bones and scraps of fat that littered the dustbins
– not only of the rich, but of the poor? The empty bottles that even the dustman scorned
to collect, because the manufacturers found it cheaper to make new ones than to clean the
old? The mountains of empty tins that nobody found it worthwhile to salvage, rusting
and stinking on the refuse dumps? The food that was burnt or buried because it did not
pay to distribute it? The land choked and impoverished with thistle and ragwort, because
it did not pay to farm it? The handkerchiefs used for paint rags and kettleholders? The
electric lights left blazing because it was too much trouble to switch them off? The fresh
peas we could not be bothered to shell, and threw aside for something out of a tin? The
paper that cumbered the shelves, and lay knee-deep in the parks, and littered the seats of
railway trains? The scattered hairpins and smashed crockery, the cheap knickknacks of
steel and wood and rubber and glass and tin that we bought to fill in an odd half hour at
Woolworth’s and forgot as soon as we had bought them? The advertisements imploring
and exhorting and cajoling and menacing and bullying us to glut ourselves with things we
did not want, in the name of snobbery and idleness and sex appeal? And the fierce
international scramble to find in helpless and backward nations a market on which to fob
off all the superfluous rubbish which the inexorable machines ground out hour by hour,
to create money and to create employment? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Do you realize how we have had to alter our whole scale of values, now that we are no
longer being urged to consume but to conserve? We have been forced back to the social
morals of our great-grandparents. When a piece of lingerie costs three precious coupons,
we have to consider, not merely its glamour value, but how long it will wear. When fats
are rationed, we must not throw away scraps, but jealously use to advantage what it cost
so much time and trouble to breed and rear. When paper is scarce we must – or we
should – think whether what we have to say is worth saying before writing or printing it.
When our life depends on the land, we have to pay in short commons for destroying its
fertility by neglect or overcropping. When a haul of herrings takes valuable manpower
from the forces, and is gathered in at the peril of men’s lives by bomb and mine and
machine gun, we read a new significance into those gloomy words which appear so often
in the fishmonger’s shop: NO FISH TODAY….We have had to learn the bitter lesson
that in all the world there are only two sources of real wealth: the fruit of the earth and
the labor of men; and to estimate work not by the money it brings to the producer, but by
the worth of the thing that is made. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The question that I will ask you to consider today is this: When the war is over, are we
likely, and do we want, to keep this attitude to work and the results of work? Or are we
preparing, and do we want, to go back to our old habits of thought? Because I believe
that on our answer to this question the whole economic future of society will depend. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sooner or later the moment will come when we have to make a decision about this. At
the moment, we are not making it – don’t let us flatter ourselves that we are. It is being
made for us. And don’t let us imagine that a wartime economy has stopped waste. It has
not. It has only transferred it elsewhere. The glut and waste that used to clutter our own
dustbins have been removed to the field of battle. That is where all the surplus
consumption is going. The factories are roaring more loudly than ever, turning out night
and day goods that are of no conceivable value for the maintenance of life; on the
contrary, their sole object is to destroy life, and instead of being thrown away they are
being blown away – in Russia, in North Africa, over Occupied France, in Burma, China,
and the Spice Islands, and on the Seven Seas.
What is going to happen when the factories stop turning out armaments? No nation has
yet found a way to keep the machines running and whole nations employed under modern
industrial conditions without wasteful consumption. For a time, a few nations could
contrive to keep going by securing a monopoly of production and forcing their waste
products on to new and untapped markets. When there are no new markets and all
nations are industrial producers, the only choice we have been able to envisage so far has
been that between armaments and unemployment. This is the problem that some time or
other will stare us in the face again, and this time we must have our minds ready to tackle
it. It may not come at once – for it is quite likely that after the war we shall have to go
through a further period of managed consumption while the shortages caused by the war
are being made good. But sooner or later we shall have to grapple with this difficulty,
and everything will depend on our attitude of mind about it. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Shall we be prepared to take the same attitude to the arts of peace as to the arts of war? I
see no reason why we should not sacrifice our convenience and our individual standard of
living just as readily for the building of great public works as for the building of ships
and tanks – but when the stimulus of fear and anger is removed, shall we be prepared to
do any such thing? Or shall we want to go back to that civilization of greed and waste
which we dignify by the name of a “high standard of living”? I am getting very much
afraid of that phrase about the standard of living. And I am also frightened by the phrase
“after the war” – it is so often pronounced in a tone that suggests: “after the war, we want
to relax, and go back, and live as we did before.” And that means going back to the time
when labor was valued in terms of its cash returns, and not in terms of the work. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now the answer to this question, if we are resolute to know what we are about, will not
be left to rich men – to manufacturers and financiers. If these people have governed the
world of late years it is only because we ourselves put the power into their hands. The
question can and should be answered by the worker and the consumer. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is extremely important that the worker should really understand where the problem lies.
It is a matter of brutal fact that in these days labor, more than any other section of the
community, has a vested interest in war. Some rich employers make profit out of war –
that is true; but what is infinitely more important is that for all working people war means
full employment and high wages. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When war ceases, then the problem of employing labor at the machines begins again.
The relentless pressure of hungry labor is behind the drive toward wasteful consumption,
whether in the destruction of war or in the trumpery of peace. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The problem is far too simplified when it is presented as a mere conflict between labor
and capital, between employed and employer. The basic difficulty remains, even when
you make the State the sole employer, even when you make Labor into the employer. It
is not simply a question of profits and wages or living conditions – but of what is to be
done with the work of the machines, and what work the machines are to do. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If we do not deal with this question now, while we have time to think about it, then the
whirligig of wasteful production and wasteful consumption will start again and will again
end in war. And the driving power of labor will be thrusting to turn the wheels, because
it is to the financial interest of labor to keep the whirligig going faster and faster till the
inevitable catastrophe comes. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And, so that those wheels may turn, the consumer – that is, you and I, including the
workers, who are consumers also – will again be urged to consume and waste; and unless
we change our attitude – or rather unless we keep hold of the new attitude forced upon us
by the logic of war – we shall again be bamboozled by our vanity, indolence, and greed
into keeping the squirrel cage of wasteful economy turning. We could – you and I –
bring the whole fantastic economy of profitable waste down to the ground overnight,
without legislation and without revolution, merely by refusing to cooperate with it. I say,
we could – as a matter of fact, we have; or rather, it has been done for us. If we do not
want to rise up again after the war, we can prevent it – simply by preserving the wartime
habit of valuing work instead of money. The point is: do we <i>want </i>to?.... </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Whatever we do, we shall be faced with grave difficulties. That cannot be disguised. But
it will make a great difference to the result if we are genuinely aiming at a real change in
economic thinking. And by that I mean a radical change from top to bottom – a new
system; not a mere adjustment of the old system to favor a different set of people. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The habit of thinking about work as something one does to make money is so ingrained
in us that we can scarcely imagine what a revolutionary change it would be to think about
it instead in terms of the work done. To do so would mean taking the attitude of mind we
reserve for our unpaid work – our hobbies, our leisure interests, the things we make and
do for pleasure – and making that the standard of all our judgments about things and
people. We should ask of an enterprise, not “will it pay?” but “is it good?”; of a man, not
“what does he make?” but “what is his work worth?”; of goods, not “Can we induce
people to buy them?” but “are they useful things well made?”; of employment, not “how
much a week?” but “will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?” And shareholders in –
let us say – brewing companies, would astonish the directorate by arising at shareholders’
meeting and demanding to know, not merely where the profits go or what dividends are
to be paid, not even merely whether the workers’ wages are sufficient and the conditions
of labor satisfactory, but loudly and with a proper sense of personal responsibility: “What
goes into the beer?” </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You will probably ask at once: How is this altered attitude going to make any difference
to the question of employment? Because it sounds as though it would result in not more
employment, but less. I am not an economist, and I can only point to a peculiarity of war
economy that usually goes without notice in economic textbooks, In war, production for
wasteful consumption still goes on: but there is one great difference in the good
produced. None of them is valued for what it will fetch, but only for what it is worth in
itself. The gun and the tank, the airplane and the warship have to be the best of their
kind. A war consumer does not buy shoddy. He does not buy to sell again. He buys the
thing that is good for its purpose, asking nothing of it but that it shall do the job it has to
do. Once again, war forces the consumer into a right attitude to the work. And, whether
by strange coincidence, or whether because of some universal law, as soon as nothing is
demanded of the thing made but its own integral perfection, its own absolute value, the
skill and labor of the worker are fully employed and likewise acquire an absolute value. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is probably not the kind of answer that you will find in any theory of economics. But the professional economist is not really trained to answer, or even to ask himself
questions about absolute values. The economist is inside the squirrel cage and turning
with it. Any question about absolute values belongs to the sphere, not of economics, but
of religion. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And it is very possible that we cannot deal with economics as all, unless we can see
economy from outside the cage; that we cannot begin to settle the relative values without
considering absolute values. And if so, this may give a very precise and practical
meaning to the words: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all
these things shall be added to you.”…. I am persuaded that the reason why the Churches
are in so much difficulty about giving a lead in the economic sphere is because they are
trying to fit a Christian standard of economic to a wholly false and pagan understanding
of work. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is the Christian understanding of work? .... I should like to put before you two or
three propositions arising out of the doctrinal position which I stated at the beginning:
namely, that work is the natural exercise and function of man – the creature who is made
in the image of his Creator. You will find that any of them if given in effect everyday
practice, is so revolutionary ( as compared with the habits of thinking into which we have
fallen), as to make all political revolutions look like conformity. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The first, stated quite briefly, is that work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but
the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s
faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the
medium in which he offers himself to God. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now the consequences of this are not merely that the work should be performed under
decent living and working conditions. That is a point we have begun to grasp, and it a
perfectly sound point. But we have tended to concentrate on it to the exclusion of other
considerations far more revolutionary. </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(a) There is, for instance, the question of profits and remuneration. We have all got it
fixed in our heads that the proper end of work is to be paid for – to produce a
return in profits or payment to the worker which fully or more than compensates
the effort he puts into it. But if our proposition is true, this does not follow at all.
So long as Society provides the worker with a sufficient return in real wealth to
enable him to carry on the work properly, then he has his reward. For his work is
the measure of his life, and his satisfaction is found in the fulfillment of his own
nature, and in contemplation of the perfection of his work. </span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That, in practice, there is this satisfaction, is shown by the mere fact that a man will put
loving labor into some hobby which can never bring him may economically adequate
return. His satisfaction comes, in the godlike manner, from looking upon what he has
made and finding it very good. He is no longer bargaining with his work, but serving it.
It is only when work has to be looked on as a means to gain that it becomes hateful; for
then, instead of a friend, it becomes an enemy from whom tolls and contributions have to
be extracted. What most of us demand from society is that we should always get out of it
a little more than the value of the labor we give to it. By this process, we persuade
ourselves that society is always in our debt – a conviction that not only piles up actual
financial burdens, but leaves us with a grudge against society. </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(b) Here is the second consequence. At present we have no clear grasp of the
principle that every man should do the work for which he is fitted by nature. The
employer is obsessed by the notion that he must find cheap labor, and the worker
by the notion that the best-paid job is the job for him. Only feebly, inadequately,
and spasmodically do we ever attempt to tackle the problem from the other end,
and inquire: What type of worker is suited to this type of work? People engaged
in education see clearly that this is the right end to start from: but they are
frustrated by economic pressure, and by the failure of parents on the one hand and
employers on the other to grasp the fundamental importance of this approach.
And that the trouble results far more from a failure of intelligence than from
economic necessity is seen clearly under war conditions, when, although
competitive economics are no longer a governing factor, the right men and
women are still persistently thrust into the wrong jobs, through sheer inability on
everybody’s part to imaging a purely vocational approach to the business of
fitting together the worker and his work. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(c) A third consequence is that, if we really believed this proposition and arranged
our work and our standard of values accordingly, we should no longer think of
work as something that we hastened to get through in order to enjoy our leisure;
we should look on our leisure as the period of changed rhythm that refreshed us
for the delightful purpose of getting on with our work. And this being so, we
should tolerate no regulations of any sort that prevented us from working as long
and as well as our enjoyment of work demanded. We should resent any such
restrictions as a monstrous interference with the liberty of the subject. How great
an upheaval of our ideas that would mean I leave you to imagine. It would turn
topsy-turvy all our notions about hours of work, rates of work, unfair competition,
and all the rest of it. We should all find ourselves fighting, as now only artists
and the members of certain professions fight, for precious time in which to get on
with the job – instead of fighting for precious hours saved from the job. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(d) A fourth consequence is that we should fight tooth and nail, not for mere
employment, but for the quality of the work that we had to do. We should clamor
to be engaged in work that was worth doing, and in which we could take pride.
The worker would demand that the stuff he helped to turn out should be good
stuff – he would no longer be content to take the cash and let the credit go. Like
the shareholders in the brewery, he would feel a sense of personal responsibility,
and clamor to know, and to control, what went into the beer he brewed. There
would be protests and strikes – not only about pay and conditions, but about the
quality of the work demanded and the honesty, beauty, and usefulness of the
goods produced. The greatest insult which a commercial age has offered to the
worker has been to rob him of all interest in the end product of the work and to
force him to dedicate his life to making badly things which were not worth
making. </span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This first proposition chiefly concerns the worker as such. My second proposition
directly concerns Christian as such, and it is this. It is the business of the Church to
recognize that the secular vocation, as such, is sacred. Christian people, and
particularly perhaps the Christian clergy, must get it firmly into their heads that when
a man or woman is called to a particular job of secular work, that is as true a vocation
as though he or she were called to specifically religious work. The Church must
concern Herself not only with such questions as the just price and proper working
conditions: She must concern Herself with seeing that work itself is such as a human
being can perform without degradation – that no one is required by economic or any
other considerations to devote himself to work that is contemptible, soul destroying,
or harmful. It is not right for Her to acquiesce in the notion that a man’s life is divided
into the time he spends on his work and the time he spends in serving God. He must
be able to serve God in his work, and the work itself must be accepted and respected
as the medium of divine creation. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In nothing has the Church so lost Her hold on reality as in Her failure to understand
and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become
separate departments, and is astonished to find that, as result, the secular work of the
world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and that the greater part of the
world’s intelligent workers have become irreligious, or at least, uninterested in
religion. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But is it astonishing? How can any one remain interested in a religion which seems
to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life? The Church’s approach to an
intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and
disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church
should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon
him is that he should make good tables. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Church by all means, and decent forms of amusement, certainly – but what use is all
that if in the very center of his life and occupation he is insulting God with bad
carpentry? No crooked table legs or ill-fitting drawers ever, I dare swear, came out of
the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth. Nor, if they did, could anyone believe that they
were made by the same hand that made Heaven and earth. No piety in the worker
will compensate for work that is not true to itself; for any work that is untrue to its
own technique is a living lie. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yet in Her own buildings, in Her own ecclesiastical art and music, in Her hymns and
prayers, in Her sermons and in Her little books of devotion, the Church will tolerate
or permit a pious intention to excuse so ugly, so pretentious, so tawdry and twaddling,
so insincere and insipid, so bad as to shock and horrify any decent draftsman. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And why? Simply because She has lost all sense of the fact that the living and eternal
truth is expressed in work only so far as that work is true in itself, to itself, to the
standards of its own technique. She has forgotten that the secular vocation is sacred.
Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church;
that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work
must be good work before it can call itself God’s work. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in
his profession or trade – not outside it. The Apostles complained rightly when they
said it was not meet they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their
vocation was to preach the word. Bu the person whose vocation it is to prepare the
meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meet for us to leave the
service of our tables to preach the word. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in
demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do
Christian work – by which She means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work
is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people
and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it
is church embroidery, or sewage farming. As Jacques Maritain says: “If you want to
produce Christian work, be a Christian, and try to make a work of beauty into which
you have put your heart; do not adopt a Christian pose.” He is right. And let the
Church remember that the beauty of the work will be judged by its own, and not by
ecclesiastical standards. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. When my play The Zeal of Thy
House was produced in London, a dear old pious lady was much struck by the beauty
of the four great archangels who stood throughout the play in their heavy, gold robes,
eleven feet high from wingtip to sandaltip. She asked with great innocence whether I
selected the actors who played the angels “for the excellence of their moral
character.” </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I replied that the angels were selected to begin with, not by me but by the producer,
who had the technical qualifications for selecting suitable actors – for that was part of
his vocation. And that he selected, in the first place, young men who were six feet
tall so that they would match properly together. Secondly, angels had to be of good
physique, so as to be able to stand stiff on the stage for two and a half hours, carrying
the weight of their wings and costumes, without wobbling, or fidgeting, or fainting.
Thirdly, they had to be able to speak verse well, in an agreeable voice and audibly.
Fourthly, they had to be reasonable good actors. When all these technical conditions
had been fulfilled, we might come to the moral qualities, of which the first would be
the ability to arrive on stage punctually and in a sober condition, since the curtain
must go up on time, and a drunken angel would be indecorous. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">After that, and only after that, one might take character into consideration, but that,
provided his behavior was not so scandalous as to cause dissension among the
company, the right kind of actor with no morals would give a far more reverent and
seemly performance than a saintly actor with the wrong technical qualifications. The
worst religious films I ever saw were produced by a company which chose its staff
exclusively for their piety. Bad photography, bad acting, and bad dialogue produced
a result so grotesquely irreverent that the pictures could not have been shown in
churches without bringing Christianity into contempt. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">God is not served by technical incompetence; and incompetence and untruth always
result when the secular vocation is treated as a thing alien to religion…. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And conversely: when you find a man who is a Christian praising God by the
excellence of his work – do not distract him and take him away from his proper
vocation to address religious meetings and open church bazaars. Let him serve God
in the way to which God has called him. If you take him away from that, he will
exhaust himself in an alien technique and lose his capacity to do his dedicated work. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is your business, you churchmen, to get what good you can from observing his
work – not to take him away from it, so that he may do ecclesiastical work for you.
But, if you have any power, see that he is set free to do this own work as well as it
may be done. He is not there to serve you; he is there to serve God by serving his
work. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This brings me to my third proposition; and this may sound to you the most
revolutionary of all. It is this: the worker’s first duty is to serve the work. The
popular catchphrase of today is that it is everybody’s duty to serve the community,
but there is a catch in it. It is the old catch about the two great commandments.
“Love God – and your neighbor: on those two commandments hang all the Law and
the Prophets.” </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The catch in it, which nowadays the world has largely forgotten, is that the second
commandment depends upon the first, and that without the first, it is a delusion and a
snare. Much of our present trouble and disillusionment have come from putting the
second commandment before the first. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If we put our neighbor first, we are putting man above God, and that is what we have
been doing ever since we began to worship humanity and make man the measure of
all things. Whenever man is made the center of things, he becomes the storm center
of trouble – and that is precisely the catch about serving the community. It ought
perhaps to make us suspicious of that phrase when we consider that it is the slogan of
every commercial scoundrel and swindler who wants to make sharp business practice
pass muster as social improvement. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Service” is the motto of the advertiser, of big business, and of fraudulent finance.
And of others, too. Listen to this: “I expect the judiciary to understand that the nation
does not exist for their convenience, but that justice exists to serve the nation.” That
was Hitler yesterday – and that is what becomes of “service,” when the community,
and not the work, becomes its idol. There is, in fact, a paradox about working to
serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to
falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and
serve the work. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are three very good reasons for this:
The first is that you cannot do good work if you take your mind off the work to see
how the community is taking it – any more than you can make a good drive from the
tee if you take your eye off the ball. “Blessed are the single hearted: (for that is the
real meaning of the word we translate “the pure in heart”). If your heart is not wholly
in the work, the work will not be good – and work that is not good serves neither God
nor the community; it only serves mammon. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second reason is that the moment you think of serving other people, you begin to
have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains; you begin to think
that you have a claim on the community. You will begin to bargain for reward, to
angle for applause, and to harbor a grievance if you are not appreciated. But if your
mind is set upon serving the work, then you know you have nothing to look for; the
only reward the work can give you is the satisfaction of beholding its perfection. The
work takes all and gives nothing but itself; and to serve the work is a labor of pure
love. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And thirdly, if you set out to serve the community, you will probably end by merely
fulfilling a public demand – and you may not even do that. A public demand is a
changeable thing. Nine-tenths of the bad plays put on in theaters owe their badness to
the fact that the playwright has aimed at pleasing the audience, in stead of at
producing a good and satisfactory play. Instead of doing the work as its own integrity
demands that it should be done, he has falsified the play by putting in this or that
which he thinks will appeal to the groundlings (who by that time have probably come
to want something else), and the play fails by its insincerity. The work has been
falsified to please the public, and in the end even the public is not pleased. As it is
with works of art, so it is with all work. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We are coming to the end of an era of civilization which began by pandering to
public demand, and ended by frantically trying to create public demand for an output
so false and meaningless that even a doped public revolted from the trash offered to it
and plugged into war rather than swallow anymore of it. The danger of “serving the
community” is that one is part of the community, and that in serving it one may only
be serving a kind of communal egotism. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The only true way of serving the community is to be truly in sympathy with the
community, to be oneself part of the community and then to serve the work without
giving the community another thought. Then the work will endure, because it will be
true to itself. It is the work that serves the community; the business of the worker is
to serve the work. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Where we have become confused is in mixing up the ends to which our work is put
with the way in which the work is done. The end of the work will be decided by our
religious outlook: as we are so we make. It is the business of religion to make us
Christian people, and then our work will naturally be turned to Christian ends,
because our work is the expression of ourselves. But the way in which the work is
done is governed by no sanction except the good of the of work itself; and religion
has no direct connection with that, except to insist that the workman should be free to
do his work well according to its own integrity. Jacques Maritain, one of the very
few religious writers of our time who really understands the nature of creative work,
has summed the matter up in a sentence. </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is required is the perfect practical discrimination between the end pursued
by the workman (finis operantis, said the Schoolmen) and the end to be served by
the work (finis operas), so that the workman may work for his wages but the work
be controlled and set in being only in relation to its own proper good and nowise
in relation to the wages earned; so that the artist may work for any and every
human intention he likes, but the work taken by itself be performed and
constructed for its own proper beauty alone. </span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Or perhaps we may put it more shortly still: If work is to find its right place in the
world, it is the duty of the Church to see to it that the work serves God, and that the
worker serves the work. </span></div>
Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-85360953320774480272019-07-10T21:36:00.002-05:002019-07-10T21:39:51.519-05:00The Shame of Oscar Wilde<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: justify;">For
a year after...I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of
time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those
who are in prison, tears are a part of every day’s experience. A day in prison
on which one does not weep is a day on which one’s heart is hard, not a day on
which one’s heart is happy.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Where
there is Sorrow there is holy ground. Some day you will realise what that
means. You will know nothing of life till you do. </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">When
I was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy between two
policemen, [my old friend] Robbie waited in the long dreary corridor, that
before the whole crowd he might gravely raise his hat to me, as handcuffed and
with bowed head I passed him by. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things
than that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love that the saints
knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the
cheek. I have never said one single word to him about what he did. I do not
know to the present moment whether he is aware that I was even conscious of his
action. It is not a thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal
words. I store it in the treasury-house of my heart. I keep it there as a
secret debt that I am glad to think I can never possibly repay. It is embalmed
and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears. </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">When
Wisdom has been profitless to me, and Philosophy barren, and the proverbs and
phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation are as dust and ashes
in my mouth, the memory of that little lowly silent act of Love has unsealed
for me all the wells of pity, made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought
me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken,
and great heart of the world.</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">--Oscar
Wilde, De Profundis</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-45555117114520322372019-07-10T20:38:00.000-05:002019-07-10T21:37:17.426-05:00Eye of the Beholder<div style="text-align: center;">
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<strong><span style="font-family: "segoe ui light" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Eye
of the Beholder</span></strong><span style="font-family: "segoe ui light" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<em><span style="font-family: "segoe ui light" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">by:
Lori Waggoner</span></em><span style="font-family: "segoe ui light" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "segoe ui light" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">A
tomboy in jeans and striped polo, I strive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "segoe ui light" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Like
a man to conquer men;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "segoe ui light" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Then
turn to discover, under your gaze,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "segoe ui light" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">I have become a princess.</span></div>
Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5046427100966845879.post-1366594391093382162019-06-16T17:01:00.002-05:002019-06-16T17:04:59.698-05:00Prologue to Remembering<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>by Wendell Berry</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="Related image" height="267" src="https://cms-assets.theasc.com/Look-and-See-2.jpg?mtime=20170707155152" width="640" /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Heavenly, Muse, Spirit who brooded on</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The world and raised it shapely out of nothing,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Touch my lips with fire and burn away</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">All dross of speech, so that I keep in mind</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The truth and end to which my words now move</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In hope. Keep my mind within that Mind</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of which it is a part, whose wholeness is</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The hope of sense in what I tell. And though</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I go among the scatterings of that sense,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The members of its worldly body broken</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rule my sight by vision of the parts</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rejoined. And in my exile's journey far</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">From home, be with me, so I may return. </span>Lori Waggonerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11640024291667610548noreply@blogger.com0