Max Ernst: Configuration

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
– Unknown, Hanlon’s Razor

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.
– George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, Act 2

To understand all is to forgive all.
– Germaine de Staël

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
– Blaise Pascal

It’s easy to say no! when there’s a deeper yes! burning inside.
– Stephen Covey

St. Teresa of Avila described our life in this world as like a night at a second-class hotel.
– Malcolm Muggeridge

The obscure we see eventually, the completely apparent takes longer.
– Edward R. Murrow

Three people were at work on a construction site. All were doing the same job, but when each was asked what the job was, the answers varied. Breaking rocks, the first replied. Earning my living, the second said. Helping to build a cathedral, said the third.
– Peter Schultz

i collect myself again
the broken pieces scattered not so far as all that
i prepare myself to be amazed
the chaos in the smoke has a primordial pattern to it
though the signs are vague
the ink of our memories dry in strewn, uneven patches
in triplicate the prophecy
of the intricate spools unthread the lines of life
thinking much of nothing
let me not believe me forsaken if caught in the rain
worlds will to change
there is a perfect rose that dies shrouded in secret
heartbreak and confusion
breakthroughs come from strange ignitions of sense

If you aren’t sure how to love, try this: give, and do not take.

It is extraordinary that sects of religious enthusiasts, from the Montanists down to the Catholic Apostolics, should have imagined that to make verbal noises which nobody else could understand was evidence of Divine Inspiration, a repetition of the miracle of Pentecost. What happened at Pentecost was exactly the opposite, the miracle of instantaneous translation — everybody could understand when everybody else was saying.

the paths that i am led down are all imaginary
though i suspect no dream truly has an ending
but too much has happened, things cannot remain the same
our eyes must accustom themselves to strange lights
i wonder, how do hearts form their ghosts?
when can we let go of the guy wires that prop up our facades?
where the spirits of the dead gather, a hive of whispers
and i am imaginary, too, a passing shadow
easily slipping from the holograms we remember of childhood
the ghost who dreamed he was flesh and blood
trapped in the heart of a lover trying to forget

Right now, let me say that I cannot find a home for my heart. I am going to take a leave from this journal for a space, perhaps two months. There is so much to do, but then again, when is there not? I always say, it is better to be too busy than not busy enough. I must therefore be truly blessed. I am traveling to a far place, not important where, actually, just to know that perhaps I may find closure to one great avenue in my life. Who is to say what the future brings? It may all in fact work out splendidly; even if it be a miracle for that to happen, I am a believer in miracles. Any rational person should be. May I keep my trust in the Lord, whatever may come, and whatever may come, may I count it all joy. Truly, what else can he who believes try to do, and be?

what i believe aligns not the axis of anything great
but it is better to hope and to be wrong
in my heart i envision a twist by the hand of God
where the fate once lay flat, forsaken
(no hurt in the world is so deep to touch the void)
strange: love is that beyond which cares
and i wonder at the source of my careful letting go
no sign to tell me why the signs are true
here in the haunches of world soul, tensed and taut
(even angels climb stairways to heaven)
of heroics and victories must our stories set sail
voyages less turning, more heartbreaking
here in the moment, we are spirits at war with time
suddenly to see how we came to be here

Bosch: Tree-Man

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One thinks, sometimes, that maybe I am meant to be a man of sorrows. I’m reading the Book of Job, and this puts something of a perspective on my own troubles. Job was meant to be a man of sorrows, never mind that he is at the end given more than he lost in the middle: because the middle undoubtedly happened. Shall I myself thus content to be put in the darkness? Shall I think that ultimately, God will do me right, yea, within this, my lifetime? I can do nothing more than hold on. If I cannot put my trust in the Lord, what is there left for me? There were two others in the Bible known by the title. Perhaps, like Jeremiah, shall I buy a field, to hope for future crops? Perhaps, like our Lord, shall I ask why God has forsaken me? Then, to awaken, and to find, strange, how the world is made new…

The preacher and the writer may seem to have an… easy task. At first sight, it may seem that they have only to proclaim and declare; but in fact, if their words are to enter men’s hearts and bear fruit, they must be the right words, shaped cunningly to pass men’s defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. This means, in practice, turning a face of flint toward the easy cliche, the well-worn religious cant and phraseology, dear, no doubt, to the faithful, but utterly meaningless to those outside the fold. It means learning how people are thinking and how they are feeling; it means learning with patience, imagination and ingenuity the way to pierce apathy or blank lack of understanding. I sometimes wonder what hours of prayer and thought lie behind the apparently simple and spontaneous parables of the Gospel.

light above light, a halo of a halo
and a string of fate is plucked
to sound the white notes of a dream
as change gives birth to time
leaving contrails of diluted bliss
we outrun the pegasus, outfly
a hundred years’ rain in one second
to be as love would set afire
illusions burn away from sheer speed
to hold a candle in the storm
this is the prophet’s perfect peace
to sound as a star igniting
walking the earth the hand of a dream

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
– Thomas Mann

Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it before it reaches you.
– Calvin Coolidge

Re-examine all that you have been told… dismiss that which insults your soul.
– Walt Whitman

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.
– Omar Bradley

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
– Oscar Wilde

in breathing, the quiet of life
cascades of starlight washing the skies
the unmoving focus in rhythm’s rails
watches through darkness as time fades
now to dream as cry in the crowd
as we dance with solitude
and the thundering heart, in pieces
joins with moonlight in cool passion
the spell unfurls a new heaven
breathless, as the rain is set loose

Léon Spilliaert: Night

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I found that when some goal was pie in the sky, an abstract fancy, it was easy for me to have faith that it would one day come to pass. But when the hour came round at last, when there was actual potential for this thing to become reality, suddenly I could find only the feathers left where angels once dwelled, there in my heart. Where did my believing go? Or is it like the muscles in exercise that they must be torn in order to gain strength? That the egg must be broken in order for us to hatch? And thus the test: to regain what we once had, that the fates stripped away, to find the believing when the reasons suddenly make no sense. This is the fire in which we are tested, until we emerge as the rarest silver, as the most angelic gold, shining like light itself. Like we were blameless.

Every complexion of the inward man, when sanctified by humility, and suffering itself to be tuned, and struck, and moved by the Holy Spirit of God, according to its particular frame and turn, helps mightily to increase that harmony of divine praise, thanksgiving, and adoration, which must arise from different instruments, sounds, and voices. To condemn this variety in the servants of God, or to be angry at those who have not served him, in the way that we have chosen for ourselves, is but too plain a sign, that we have not enough renounced the elements of selfishness, pride, and anger.

to have escaped the gravity of sadness
to find new orbits in this outer of spaces
i let go of the grasp of time
so everything begins to happen at once
and not happen at all, it is strange
i seem to recall when it was like this before
when i awoke in a dream of a dream
i found all beginnings were illusions
and nothing ends, it is all happening:
we are merely trapped in this sorrow
this life, of pain and finality
one day to let go, and suddenly, today
the doors of eternity blast open