Dingo daydreams
Finished reading: Love’s Braided Dance by Norman Wirzba 📚
The introductory essay was excellent.
The way of hope is inspired by an acknowledgment of what can be called the miracle or grace of life itself, the realization that your own life and the lives of others are the never-again-to-be-repeated embodied expressions of life’s primordial, gifted goodness. Affirmation of the love-worthiness of this world is the spark that ignites a hopeful way of being because it calls people to give their love to the world in return. When love is given, the prospect, but not the guarantee, of a better future emerges.
The book mostly dropped off after that, at least for me. But Wirzba does bring it back toward the end of the book. If I get a chance, I may try to say some more about the final chapter. But don’t hold your breath. I’m easily distracted, and lately have the attention span of a
[Every child] should be encouraged to enter the best profession, and the best profession is the one which brings most profit to neighbors.
Best friends
Reading the last line of Dispatch Politics, I get some seriously ominous chills down my spine:
But at the top of the ticket, it wasn’t particularly close in the Tar Heel State, with Trump appearing to win by a larger margin there than he did in 2020 or 2016. And in that example was the story of the election: Trump and the GOP have come back, stronger than ever.
“Dont worry, I’ll keep your chair warm for me.”
“As silly and as wise” — My first exhortation for the coming years is pretty well summed up by my reflection on Meacham’s And There Was Light, which is about ourselves long before it’s about elected officials.
Our minds are endlessly engaged in the business of tidying up the landscape of the heart so that… we can feel better about ourselves.
Thousands of bits of paper are falling into ballot-boxes today, all over the country. It is a little thing, and can be done very easily, but mighty consequences may hang on the result.
—Private Wilbur Fisk of the Second Vermont, November 1864
Back in the fall of 2016, I was taking a creative writing class just for fun. This was my election day poem… just for fun 🤓:
Civic Duty
When I walk from the booth tonight,
I need not feel distress.
I’ll drop the ballot in the box,
Then smile and say, ‘God bless.'
No news or ranting talk show host
Will fill me with regret;
As engine turns, release a sigh,
It’s finished now, why fret?
So home I’ll go, where even though
They wait, and wait, and wait,
I’ll raise my feet in solitude,
Márquez, and me, and fate.
And when I rest my weary head,
My mind will be at ease.
For I can say, without a doubt,
I did not aim to please.
In silence, then, take time to pray,
The Lord my soul to keep.
If Trump should win before I wake,
My soul, Lord, you may take.