Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

If only during this time bitterness and envy have not corroded the heart; that we come to see matters great and small, happiness and misfortune, strength and weakness with new eyes; that our sense for greatness, humanness, justice, and mercy has grown clearer, freer, more incorruptible; that we learn, indeed, that personal suffering is a more useful key, a more fruitful principle than personal happiness for exploring the meaning of the world in contemplation and action. But this perspective from below must not lead us to become advocates for those who are perpetually dissatisfied. Rather, out of a higher satisfaction, which in its essence is grounded beyond what is below and above, we do justice to life in all its dimensions and in this way affirm it.

Shear coastal madness

Bacon-wrapped dates — also known as, just another excuse to eat bacon

David Bosworth:

But should you be tempted to purchase in advance a ticket-to-ride on Musk’s escapist enterprise, you might want to consider these facts first. Mars’s atmosphere has next to no oxygen, the planet’s average temperature is -81 degrees Fahrenheit, and its distance from Earth is 133 million miles. Best not to get locked out of your doomsday bunker there, nor expect a frontier scout or an underpaid but dedicated EMT to arrive from afar to save your day.

“Conversation at its best is the encounter of difference, not as a contest, but as an act of loving truth while learning to love one another better.”

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Photo from a friend in Hallowell. That’s the highest level in 25 years. The flood standard for the Kennebec River is 35,000 cubic feet per second. Today in Sidney, my hometown 15 minutes north of here, the flow was 144,000 cubic feet per second.

“We seem only happy enough to be partners in the abolition of the body.” — This is one of the scariest things I have ever read. And combined with this, I feel unequivocally like this.

Mary Oliver:

The second world—the world of literature—offered me, besides the pleasures of form, the sustentation of empathy (the first step of what Keats called negative capability) and I ran for it. I relaxed in it. I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything—other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-strung heart.

The “comforts” of home.