"and where there's doubt..." | the prayer of somebody who's not st. francis

"The anonymous text that is usually called the Prayer of Saint Francis is often associated with the Italian Saint Francis of Assisi (c. 1182 – 1226), but entirely absent from his writings. The prayer in its present form has not been traced back further than 1912. Its first known occurrence was in French, in a small spiritual magazine called La Clochette (The Little Bell), published by a Catholic Church organization in Paris named La Ligue de la Sainte-Messe (The League of the Holy Mass). The author's name was not given, although it may have been the founder of La Ligue, Father Esther Bouquerel." 

slightly paraphrased from wikipedia

jeanne murray walker | flight

The angel speeding down the runway pulls up
her wing flaps, and, wouldn't you know it, wobbles, 
then dribbles to a stop. She stands on the windy 
tarmac, embarrassed, brushing her blond hair 
from her eyes, trying to remember how to elevate 
herself, wishing she'd worn jeans instead of 
the girly skirt that looks good when she's flying.   
It's gravity's old malice, showing up in the strangest 
places, now at the corner, where the fortune cookie truck 
forgets how to turn, tipping gracefully, sliding on 
its side as cookies spill into the summer night. 

Then mercy stalls in every precinct of the city 

and we're just bodies, only protoplasm for a wasp 
to sting. Even love is a sad mechanical business then, 
and prayer an accumulation of words I would kill 
to believe in. There's no happy end to a poem
that lacks faith, no way to get out. I could go on, 
mentioning that doubt, no doubt, is a testing. But
meanwhile the bedraggled angel glances towards 
the higher power, wondering how much help she'll get, 
not a manual, for sure, but a pause in entropy perhaps, 
until she can get her wings scissoring. Call it cooperation 
that helps a fledgling rise to build, sustain itself, and 
lift her past the tree line. And then she knows she won't 
fall, oh holy night, can't fall. Anything but. 

shakespeare + st paul | image and imagination

"Christ is the visible image of the invisible God." Colossians 1:15

“And as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen 

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing 

A local habitation and a name” 

A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare

william least heat moon | when you start feeling good

"You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you've been feeling bad."

Blue Highways, pg 51 

amor towles | the difference between everybody and nobody

   "So," said the Count, "are you looking forward to your visit home?"
   "Yes, it will be nice to see everyone," said Nina. "But when we return to Moscow in January, I shall be starting school."

   "You don't seem very excited by the prospect."

   "I fear it will be dreadfully dull," she admitted, "and positively overrun with children."

   The Count nodded gravely to acknowledge the indisputable likelihood of children in the schoolhouse; then, as he dipped his own spoon into the scoop of strawberry, he noted that he had enjoyed school very much.

   "Everybody tells me that."

   "I loved reading the Odyssey and the Aeneid; and I made some of the finest friends of my life..."

   "Yes, yes," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Everybody tells me that too."

   "Well, sometimes everybody tells you something because it is true."

   "Sometimes," Nina clarified, "everybody tells you something because they are everybody. But why should one listen to everybody? Did everybody write the Odyssey? Did everybody write the Aeneid?" She shook her head then concluded definitively: "The only difference between everybody and nobody is all the shoes."

Amor Towles

from A Gentleman in Moscow

thornton wilder | every good and excellent thing

"Every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for."

the nancy drew mystery game