Quote of the Day

We serve a God who takes sides.

The controversial nature of such a statement is itself evidence of the theological rot that has pervaded the evangelical community.

Our God comes through the pages of scripture as a God who is unequivocally and always for the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich, the oppressed against their oppressors, the powerless against the powerful, the impoverished against the privileged.

Many White evangelicals can grudgingly accept this, but are loath to apply it. Because in the United States all of these dualities are racialized. In our history the oppressed and their oppressors have had a certain color.

The overwhelming weight of the evidence and the cry of personal testimonies like those of Tripp Lee says that they still do.

So when we believe our task is simply to be civil and see the good in both sides, we adopt a neutrality that God himself doesn’t abide.

- Jesse Curtis,

 “How Should Christians Respond?.

(Hat tip to Fred Clark at Slacktivist for this.)

Sunshine in a Tea Cup

“Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.”

{Photo Source}

Quote - Louisa May Alcott, Little Men.

Lost in the Hospital

 - Rafael Campo

 

It’s not that I don’t like the hospital.

Those small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave.

The smell of antiseptic cleansers.

The ill, so wistful in their rooms, so true.

My friend, the one who’s dying, took me out

To where the patients go to smoke, IV’s

And oxygen in tanks attached to them—

A tiny patio for skeletons. We shared

A cigarette, which was delicious but

Too brief. I held his hand; it felt

Like someone’s keys. How beautiful it was,

The sunlight pointing down at us, as if

We were important, full of life, unbound.

I wandered for a moment where his ribs

Had made a space for me, and there, beside

The thundering waterfall of his heart,

I rubbed my eyes and thought, “I’m lost.”

from: What The Body Told. Copyright 1996.

 

Poetry & the Garden

A while back, Chris asked me if I knew of any good collections of garden poetry. Although I know I've read a lot poetry on the subject over the years, I can recall very little of it on command.  I have tried to include a poem about the garden, or a related topic, with each of my Saturday Farmer's Market posts, but I really know of no actual collections.

But . . .  Wouldn't that make a great anthology?!?

'Garden Poetry' . . . 'Poetry on Gardens' . . . 'A Garden of Poetry' . . . 'Poetry & the Garden' . . .

What would the sections be? Besides poetry about gardens we could include poetry about flowers, mountains, nature, ... even weeds.




The garden in many of these poems is a metaphor, but as I stand in my own garden, I understand that metaphor is often just another word for life. (Be careful what you munch on while in the garden!)

Of course, when thinking about nature, the first name that comes to my mind is Henry David Thoreau and Walden.

Then of course, there's Walt Whitman, and Leaves of Grass. * This Compost! *

And Ralph Waldo Emerson. * My Garden *

Emily Dickinson came from a family of gardeners and tended plants throughout her life. It shows. * My Garden * Come Slowly Eden * With a Flower * A Dew Sufficed Itself * A Service of Song * May Flower * Psalm of the Day * Summer Shower * Summer’s Armies * The Bee * The Bee is not afraid * The Grass * The Purple Clover * The Sea of Sunset * To Buy A Flower * Why *  

William Wordsworth was an avid gardener and his family home, Rydal Mount, contained many acres of gardens that he designed. * Lines written above Tintern Abbey *

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

The Sissinghurst Castle garden was created in the 1930s by writer Vita Sackville-West. One of the most famous national gardens in England, Sissinghurst is divided by high hedges into “rooms,” each with its own distinctive color and theme. * Bee-Masters * Making Cider *

I found a few more Garden Poems: 

* The Glory of the Garden - Rudyard Kipling * Fireflies in the Garden - Robert Frost * The Garden of Love - William Blake * The Lily - William Blake * The Sun - Mary Oliver * To Nature - Samuel Taylor Coleridge * This Lime Tree Bower My Prison - Samuel Taylor Coleridge * The Sea at Night - Sri Aurobindo * Stray Birds - Tagore * The First Jasmines - Tagore * Ode To a Nightingale - J.Keats * The Song of the Flower - K.Gibran * The Gardener’s Speech from Richard II - William Shakespeare * The Mower, Against Gardens - Andrew Marvell * The Garden - Andrew Marvell * The Deserted Garden - Elizabeth Barrett Browning * Belovèd, thou hast brought me many flowers - Elizabeth Barrett Browning * Lines Written in Kensington Gardens - Matthew Arnold * Behind a Wall - Amy Lowell * Blight - Edna St. Vincent Millay * This is the garden: colors come and go - e.e. cummings * A Girl’s Garden - Robert Frost * Written at a Farm - John Codrington Bampfylde * My Garden - Thomas Edward Brown * Wistaria - Witter Bynner * The Gardener - Robert Louis Stevenson * The Garden - Thomas Campion * A Garden Song - Austin Dobson * Down in the Garden Close - William Byron Forbush * Behind a Wall - Amy Lowell * The Little Garden - Amy Lowell * The Fruit Garden Path - Amy Lowell * A Garden by the Sea - William Morris * Eutopia - Francis Turner Palgrave * The Garden - James Shirley * Inscription for a Grotto - Mark Akenside * The Arbour - Anne Bronte * this is the garden:colours come and go - E.E. Cummings * They'll spend the summer - Joshua Beckman * Digging Potatoes, Sebago, Maine - Amy King * October - Louise Glück * Angel of Duluth - Madelon Sprengnether * Done With - Ann Stanford * The Public Garden - Robert Lowell * My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer - Mark Strand * Telling the Bees - Deborah Digges * Lucinda Matlock - Edgar Lee Masters * They'll spend the summer - Joshua Beckman * Mother - Herman de Coninck * Vacant Lot with Pokeweed - Amy Clampitt * They that have power to hurt and will do none (Sonnet 94) - William Shakespeare * Tomorrow - David Budbill * A Red Palm - Gary Soto *   

Here's an interesting site -
 GARDEN STEW: Nature and Gardening Poetry

 

How's this Chris? Does it help at all?

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

Language of Love

 - Rae Armantrout

There were distinctive

dips and shivers

in the various foliage,

syncopated,

almost cadenced in the way   

that once made him invent   

“understanding.”

Now the boss could say   

“parameters”

and mean something   

like “I’ll pinch.”

By repeating the gesture exactly   

the woman awakened

an excited suspicion

in the infant.

When he awakened

she was just returning from   

one of her little trips.

It’s common to confuse

the distance

with flirtation:

that expectant solemnity   

which seems to invite a kiss.

He stroked her carapace

with his claw.

They had developed a code

in which each word appeared to refer   

to some abdicated function.

Thus, in a department store,   

Petite Impressions might neighbor   

Town Square.

But he exaggerated it

by mincing

words like “micturition,”   

setting scenes

in which the dainty lover   

would pretend to leave.

Was it sadness or fear?

He still wasn’t back.

The act of identification,

she recognized,

was always a pleasure,

but this lasting difference   

between sense and recognition   

made her unhappy

or afraid.

Once she was rewarded   

by the beams

of headlights flitting   

in play.

from: Veil: New and Selected Poems. Copyright 2001.

Have You Ever . . . Faked It?

Book Riot asked its readers to confess the books they pretend to have read.

828 readers completed the survey, listing 412 unique titles. We’ve got a lot of dead white guys on this list, and only 3 contemporary titles.

Of their top twenty, I have actually read 9. Yay! (in bold) However, I must confess that I once claimed to have read another 3. It was many, many years ago, in a situation where having read the books meant you were part of the club. (Ever been there?)

This clique had a way of belittling others. You know, that under the radar, confidence killing stuff, that high schoolers are so good at - and we were in college. This type of person irritates me to no end, and I admit, I caved. At the time, I convinced myself that I was gaining a platform from which to fight back. I know, it's no excuse. And in reality, they never heard anything they didn't want to hear anyway.

I'm sorry. Do you think less of me?

How about you? Have you ever claimed to have read a book that you haven't actually read?
What circumstances might make you do it?

Click {here} to see the entire list.

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (85 mentions)
2. Ulysses by James Joyce - :(
3. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
4. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - :(
5. The Bible
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
10. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
11. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
12. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
13. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
14. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
15. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
16. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
17. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
18. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - :(
19. Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
20. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (21 mentions)