Thanks for an excellent piece, Billie. Especially this: "Faith looks at a world falling apart and refuses to accept that world, not out of delusion (in some way faith is more clear eyed and sober than anything) but out of a rejection of the world that despair builds."
Hi from a little south of you, in Columbia. I like this very much, and not only for the Tolkien references. I hope faith will be a basis for hope, in that individials holding faith regardless of cost means that we're holding faith together. And where two are gathered...
While we're trading quotes:
Try to Praise the Mutilated World
By Adam Zagajewski
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees going nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
G.K.Chesterton, in "The Ballad of the White Horse",
put these words in the mouth of the Virgin Mary
as she addressed King Arthur:
"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"
http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/white-horse2.html
C.S. Lewis, in 'Notes on the Way', The Spectator, 9th Nov. 1946,
commented on this poem:
Does not the central theme - the highly paradoxical message which
Alfred receives from the Virgin - embody the feeling, and the only
possible feeling, with which in any age, almost-defeated men
take up such arms as are left them and win? . . . Hence,
in those quaking days just after the fall of France, a young friend
of mine (just about to enter the R.A.F.) and I found ourselves
quoting to one another stanza after stanza of the Ballad.
There was nothing else to say.
Thanks for an excellent piece, Billie. Especially this: "Faith looks at a world falling apart and refuses to accept that world, not out of delusion (in some way faith is more clear eyed and sober than anything) but out of a rejection of the world that despair builds."
Hi from a little south of you, in Columbia. I like this very much, and not only for the Tolkien references. I hope faith will be a basis for hope, in that individials holding faith regardless of cost means that we're holding faith together. And where two are gathered...
While we're trading quotes:
Try to Praise the Mutilated World
By Adam Zagajewski
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees going nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.