May 17, 2020
Beehive Hairdos
Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy died this past week.
In the years after the mauling, Mr. Horn and Mr. Fischbacher tried to minimize what was widely reported as a ferocious attack. They said the tiger had been unhinged by a woman in the front row with a beehive hairdo and the sight of Mr. Horn tripping as he tried to step between them, and that the tiger had picked Mr. Horn up by the neck, as a tigress might a cub, and was attempting to carry him to safety.
I believe beehive hairdo is the most plausible explanation.
Really, Jesus! “
Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall.”??Luke? ?11:17? ?NIV??
Mantra – A personal mantra is an affirmation to motivate and inspire you to be your best self. It is typically a positive phrase or statement that you use to affirm the way you want to live your life. … The true value of a mantra comes when it is audible, visible, and/or in your thoughts.
Thinking about what my personal manta is…?
Quarantine Illusions – If you squint you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. Nora Caplan-Bricker, Lost Illusions
Confession – I think it’s not so much the sin that offends God as it is the refusal to come clean and confess it as sin. It’s the hiding, blaming, excuses, and self-deception that grieves the heart of God. That’s the difference between an admission and a confession. An admission says, “I did it, but it was not my fault.” A confession is simple honesty before God about what is true. J D Walt
Endurance – Endurance is patience. It is shortening your time horizon so you just have to get through this day. Endurance is living with unpleasantness. In fact, it is finding you can adapt and turn the strangest circumstance into routine. Endurance is fortifying. It is discovering you can get socked in the nose and take it. Above all, endurance is living with uncertainty. Sometimes, it’s remaining quiet in the face of uncertainty because no conjecture will really tell you what is coming. Endurance is the knowledge that the only way out is through and whatever must be borne will be borne. David Brooks
Job – “It is presumptuous to comment on the book of Job. It is so full of the awesome reality of the living God. Like Job, one can only put one’s hand over one’s mouth.” Francis I Andersen
Imagination – It must therefore be by the exercise of that faculty [Imagination] that one moves towards faith. Poems present their testimony as circumstantial evidences, not as closing argument. Where Wallace Stevens says,’God and the imagination are one’, I would say that the imagination, which synergizes intellect, emotion and instinct, is the perceptive organ through which it is possible, though not inevitable, to experience God.” (A Poet’s View.) JimGordon
What the Fig Tree Said
Denise Levertov
Literal minds! Embarrassed humans! His friends
were blurting for Him
in secret: wouldn’t admit they were shocked.
They thought Him
petulant to curse me!—yet how could the Lord
be unfair?—so they looked away,
then and now.
But I, I knew that
helplessly barren though I was,
my day had come. I served
Christ the Poet,
who spoke in images: I was at hand,
a metaphor for their failure to bring forth
what is within them (as figs
were not within me). They who had walked
in His sunlight presence,
they could have ripened,
could have perceived His thirst and hunger,
His innocent appetite;
they could have offered
human fruits—compassion, comprehension—
without being asked,
without being told of need.
My absent fruit
stood for their barren hearts. He cursed
not me, not them, but
(ears that hear not, eyes that see not)
their dullness, that withholds
gifts unimagined.
Highlight of the Week