So this IS the new year....really.
This new year has been much like the road I live on. Lots of crotch rocket motorcycles screeching by, old cars with lots of bass buzzing, and pickup trucks with no mufflers. Lots of rattling the windows.
I have time off from work, but feel a bit like it's blowing by me. I've found a few moments to go running, get sick, read, and do some writing as well. Quite a noisy life, currently.
School has started again, and the energy here at the house has slowly picked up to a fury.
I have two new books I'm digging into - the english standard version of the Bible, and the Citizenship Papers, by Wendell Berry. Here's a few quotes:
"First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth."
"It is understandable that we should have reacted to the attacks of September 11, 2001, by curtailment of civil rights, by defiance of laws, and by resort to overwhelming force, for those actions are the ready products of fear and hasty thought. But they cannot protect us against the destruction of our own land by ourselves. They cannot protect us against the selfishness, wastefulness, and greed that we have legitimized here as economic virtues, and have taught to the world."
Much for me to consider. Immediately, I've been confronted with the fact that I have lots of spiritual catchphrases, and ways of sounding tapped in, but I do not read the Bible, nor pray as I should be drawn to...the desire giving by God to want relationship vs. isolation.
That, and I live most of my life out of fear. Not wanting the windows rattled. Oh for courage to change.
posted by Steve at 8:30 AM
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11:20 PM
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11:20 PM
...Not to delve into politics too deeply... I, too, am reading Citizenship Papers - and I do believe the man is genius. The essay you quoted, "A Citizen's Response", is too dense with 'quotable quotes'. I've never had to read an essay slower, nor ponder every sentence I read. One of my favorite passages....
"'But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil' (President Bush 9/14/2001). A government, committing its nation to rid the world of evil, is assuming necessarily that it and its nation are good.
But the proposition that anything so multiple and large as a nation can be good is an insult to common sense. It is also dangerous, because it precludes any attempt at self-criticism or self-correction; it precludes public dialogue. It leads us far indeed from the traditions of religion and democracy that are intended to measure and so sustain our efforts to be good. 'There is none good but one, that is, God' Christ said. Also: 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.' And Thomas Jefferson justified general education by the obligation of citizens to be critical of their government: 'for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence.' An inescapable requirement of true patriotism, love for one's land, is a vigilant distrust of any determinative power, elected or unelected, that may preside over it."
See you in a few weeks big brother. Happy Reading.
11:21 PM
Sarah has given me some snippits of that book, and I will continue with it when she is done...but I think Mr. Berry is right on. Too bad more of us weren't so intent on living rather than getting by, or getting over, or getting off...
4:25 PM
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