“… The writer and the worshipper both draw from one source, the source where sound becomes melody, and melody turns into language, which becomes offering. Both are as open as an open wound. Both live tense and privileged moments. If one may assume that man could not live without literature, which is not so sure, one may equally affirm that neither could he survive without prayer.”
- Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), in 2003 interview with Krista Tippett - you can read / listen here
Hazing smoke amongst the in-town trees and buildings for the past couple weeks was cleared by yesterday's rainfall, but it still lingers in the surrounding mountains.
We're extremely thankful to not have flames visible in Missoula's backyard wilderness this summer, and pray for calm rains to fall in Glacier National Park, British Columbia, California, and multiple other areas of the country that are still burning.
"But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys
behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious
metal in the dirt." - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
"....Well every time I fell behind, I could not get ahead.
I wish someone would pull the lever and give me a little sand.
And every time I slip behind, even further back,
I wish some switch man would come out of the fog and change my track..."
- From "Freight Train" by Alan Jackson
"Mossbawn, my first house, was beside the railway.
And along the railway, there ran telegraph wires.
And along the telegraph wires, there used to run raindrops. And we used to think the telegrams were sent in the raindrops.
So this is called "The Railway Children."
When we climbed the slopes of the cutting / We were eye-level with the white cups / Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.
Like lovely freehand they curved for miles / East and miles west beyond us, sagging / Under their burden of swallows.
We were small and thought we knew nothing / Worth knowing.
We thought words travelled the wires / In the shiny pouches of raindrops, / Each one seeded full with the light / Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves / So infinitesimally scaled / We could stream through the eye of a needle."
- Seamus Heaney, Poet and Much More (1939-2013), from an NPR interview
Read and listen to the full story here.
Holiday Repost: 23 May 2013
“Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.”
- James A. Garfield, 20th president of US 1881 (1831 - 1881)
“Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.”James A. Garfield, 20th president of US 1881 (1831 - 1881)
