Category: Life

5.1.2025 – changes in our lives

changes in our lives
accidents, happenstances
the slightest pushes

It was the first truly important night of my life.

Despite my aching bones and blistered feet I sensed a possibility of strength, of a mission that drew solace and the chance of success or victory from the fire, from the dog, from my fellow human Fred, the night, the bright moon and stars, even the owl we were hearing intermittently.

This sounds vaguely absurd now but then so many changes in the direction of our lives come as a result of accidents, happenstances, the slightest pushes in any direction, and on the more negative side the girl you met at a gathering you didn’t want to attend who infected your life to the extent that the scar tissue will follow you into old age.

but then so many changes in the direction of our lives come as a result of accidents, happenstances, the slightest pushes in any direction

From True North by Jim Harrison ( Grove/Atlantic, New York, 2004)

So many changes in the direction of our lives come as a result of accidents, happenstances, the slightest pushes in any direction.

Then toss in the forward march of time.

Like the tide that twice a day comes in and sweeps the beach clean and leaves a clean slate wide open for accidents, happenstances or the slightest pushes in any direction.

All blank and wide open for changes that will infect your life to the extent that the scar tissue will follow you into old age.

Maybe this is where Jesus was going when mounted up on that hill side and sermonized saying, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Trouble enough for each day that will infect your life to the extent that the scar tissue will follow you into old age.

4.26.2025 – wondered why should be …

wondered why should be …
we are made for a bright world
but live in a dark one

He didn’t know it, but by then he was the very last knight of the Round Table still alive.

All the others were gone.

And when at last his time came, too, he lay down on a hot dry hill in the shade of an ancient silvery-leafed olive tree, alone except for his horse, and a single tiny perching bird that almost seemed to glow from within, as if it had swallowed a star, though it could just as easily have been a trick of the light. He looked up at the empty clouds, and as he died he wondered, not for the first time but for the very last, why it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one.

The closing sentences of The Bright Sword : a Novel of King Arthur by Lev Grossman, New York] : Viking, 2024.

I love Arthur books.

Not so much the movies as no one really gets Arthur right because of the timing of it all.

As Mr. Grossman write in a note a the end of his book: “But the Arthur of our collective popular imagination comes primarily from versions of the story written a thousand years after that, in the high medieval period, by authors who weren’t much interested in historical rigor. A historically accurate sixth-century Briton wouldn’t have fought in plate armor, because there wasn’t any in Britain at that time. He wouldn’t have lived in England, because England didn’t exist yet—England is named after the Angles, one of those Germanic tribes Arthur was fighting so hard to keep out. Likewise he wouldn’t have competed in tournaments or lived in a castle, and if he did it definitely wouldn’t have been Camelot, which was also made up by Chrétien de Troyes in the twelfth century. He couldn’t have known Sir Palomides, because Palomides is a Muslim, and Muhammad wasn’t born till around the year 570. This Arthur—the Arthur of Malory and Tennyson, of T. H. White’s The Once and Future King and the musical Camelot—is a loose mash-up of a thousand-odd years of British history.“

So Knights of the Round Table but no suits of armor …

Luckily its all fiction and disbelief is suspended anyway.

But I do enjoy the Arthur stories.

I especially like the ones were Lancelot comes off as a royal pain in the arse.

I like a little redemption of Guinevere and more mystery to Merlin.

And I have always liked a Nimue who is independent and can show the way home.

And I enjoy how writers stuggle to get Morgan le Fey into the story line.

From A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to Bernard Cornwell’s Arthur Trilogy, I read them all.

Of all them however, its Mr. Grossman’s Bright Sword that got me to think the most.

Not want to so too much as maybe some one will read it on there own.

If you do, let me know ur thoughts.

4.20.2025 – why look for living

why look for living
among the dead – not here – has
risen! remember!

Based on the Bible verses:

Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee … (Luke 24:5-6 NIV)

In April 1945, near the end of World War II, C.S. Lewis preached a sermon titled “The Grand Miracle”, which was later published as an essay.

Dr. Lewis closed with:

Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale. A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’ in the same spirit in which he says, ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’

Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.

The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned.

There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.

We can.

We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those ‘high mid-summer pomps’ in which our leader, the Son of man, already dwells, and to which He is calling us.

It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.