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Once again our friend Susan comes through with the goods. Here is Shakespeare on the topic of hound dogs:

THESEUS
Go, one of you, find out the forester;
For now our observation is perform'd;
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley; let them go:
Dispatch, I say, and find the forester.
Exit an Attendant

We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top,
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

HIPPOLYTA
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding: for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

THESEUS
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
Judge when you hear.


"I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder": I'm pretty sure this is what our neighbors say when Rocky's haranguing them as they walk by the house.
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I received this tiny note among my produce from the community farm last week:

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After leaving dinner for our 17th anniversary this evening, we found this beautiful rainbow:

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Entertainment Weekly published a list of "new classics" from the last 25 years in the areas of novels, films, and more. So I picked through my list of reading to see what would be on my list (novels only). This reflects my limited reading, but for what it's worth, here's my top ten. Note that you can get many of these used from Amazon for less than a dollar (plus shipping):


1. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

2. Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

3. Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe

4. The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

5. Atonement, by Ian McEwan

6. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold

7. Horse Heaven, by Jane Smiley

8. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

9. 1982 Janine, by Alasdair Gray

10. How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby

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--words of slain anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone

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A few entries ago I posted a sculpture from the Capitoline Museum in Rome. I remember looking at it and thinking how sad the woman looked, with the armaments of war behind her. As I was looking at it, Maggie came up behind me, looked at it for a minute, and said quietly, "She just looks so SAD." That sculpture and moment have always stayed with me.

Below is a sculpture from Switzerland that Mark Twain called the saddest sculpture in the world. Ed and Tim just got back from a trip there where they took the photo below. Apparently the sculpture was made after a particularly devastating war where the Swiss saw broken soldiers heading back home, and it was then that they undertook their vow of neutrality:

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I like this photographer, who has a series of photographs on the arctic region:

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I'm reading Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation, which details the development of what some have called the Axial Age (as in axis--a turning). Between 700 and 200 BCE, religions all over the world changed their focus. Previously, religion had been centered on animal sacrifice and rites designed to bring material well-being and safety. In the Axial Age, religion became about ethics---doing good.

In the introduction, Armstrong talks about "the transcendent experience that humans seem to require." And goes on with this passage:

"We all look for moments of ecstasy and rapture, when we inhabit our humanity more fully than usual and feel deeply touched within and lifted momentarily beyond ourselves. We are meaning-seeking creatures and, unlike other animals, fall very easily into despair if we cannot find significance and value in our lives."
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As another JoC song says:

Shed your heart and your breath and your pain and fly.

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Jars of Clay is one of my very, very favorite bands. But every time I have given a sample of their music to someone, the lucky recipient has failed to grasp their brilliance. Here's a sample of their lyrics . . . to a beautiful song called "Surprise" (from the album Good Monsters). You have to imagine the melody, a quiet, swinging, haunting sound:

Surprise

Shoot a dream in your arm and sleep away,
It’s not the stuff that kills you that keeps your life at bay
Every crash pulls you in reach,
Of a watershed of signal flares that cover your beach,

These are just placebos to make us feel all right,
Illusions in our pockets make our feathers float us high,
For a second I thought I saw your eyelids rise,
For a moment something restless caught you by surprise,
Surprise, surprise, surprise.

We are so beautiful when we sleep,
Hearts of gold and eyes so . . . deep, deep, deep.
But love won’t cure the chaos, and hope won’t hide the loss,
And peace is not the heroine that shouts above the cause.
And love is wild for reasons, and hope though short in sight,
Might be the only thing that wakes you by surprise
surprise, surprise, surprise.

Dream, little ones . . .
See the world that’s just begun.

Love is wild for reasons, and hope though short in sight,
Might be the only thing that wakes you by surprise,
for a moment I thought I saw your eyelids rise . . .

Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise.
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Equally important: those friends who just said, "You're right for being upset about this."
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Almost every day since I transitioned from being a committed, full-faith Christian to being an agnostic I have thought about faith and its role in my life. What did it do for me, and what have I lost with it? At heart, faith is an engine. It's a power that fuels your will to do whatever it is you think you should be doing. That deep assurance that God was real allowed me to stop smoking in one day, stop swearing in one day, stop beating myself up in . . . let's say in time, stop living inside my own head. It made it possible for Mother Teresa to spend her life in the slums. It made it possible for Corrie Ten Boom to risk her life to hide Jews in WWII. It made it possible for Eric Rudolph to blow up an abortion clinic, and for a group of religious fundamentalists to pilot airliners into skyscrapers.

Faith isn't a good or bad. Faith is simply possibility---but a unique kind of possibility. A uniquely strong one like no other. Believers can become radically good, radically evil, and maybe even radically anti-radical (go Laodicea!).

In my life now, I'm haunted by my desire to be good. I try to do no evil, but that's not quite the same thing. And though one good deed is better than a hundred good attitudes, it's the attitude that is the hardest. Just today I've struggled mightily with my anger toward a coworker, and my beautiful and beautifully souled friend Debbie tried to talk me down with emails like this:

REMEMBER ALSO:
calm blue ocean. she is a child of The Little Baby Jesus (<-- i have no idea). she isn't foiling you just to foil you. she's doing it because she has her own (silly?) reasons for being stubborn. remember that this isn't (necessarily) about getting your way but about helping her to communicate what her concerns about the project are and being the problem solver/compromiser (because she isn't going to be). channel Barry, lynn'weber! don't see white america or black america. see the United STATES of america! (<-- no idea)

WWRD*,
dj

*What Would Rocky Do


To which I responded:

You ARE wise, Oh . . . um, Wise One. I'll just keep humming "Jesus Loves Her, This I Know." Even if after the 50th iteration, it starts to take on a desperate, forced quality. As if hummed by Gaeta.


To which SHE responded:

LYNN: *disheveled, sweaty, putrid [see: gangrene]* *singing under breath**wincing* *fingering dog-eared picture of Rocky in pocket*
[Sorry . . . you'll have to be a Battlestar Galactica fan to get these Gaeta references]

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

This really did help me today. I can't claim total victory, but these reminders help me keep my little tiny flame of compassion and holiness alive. Inside, I'm crouching down with my hands cupped around it, giving it gentle breaths, and taking these gentle breaths from my friends, to keep that small flame burning. I think of my favorite song, by Sam Phillips:

I need love
Not some sentimental prison.
I need God
Not a political church.
I need fire
To melt the frozen sea inside me.
I need love.

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It All Comes Down to Chard

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I got my first pickup of local produce through my CSA (community-supported agriculture) subscription this year. Mint: fresh. Strawberries: delish. Pearl onions the size of apples: helpful. Swiss chard: abundant. But I found an absolutely delicious chard recipe online:

Prelude: Put a handful of raisins in hot water to soften. Optional: Throw in some crystallized ginger as well.

1. Combine butter and olive oil in pan. Saute ginormous pearl onion (or similar)
till soft.

2. Add chard and cook down till tender. Add thyme and marjoram. Remove from heat and add raisins.

3. Feel righteous for eating dark leafy greens.
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