Quote of the Month/Summer: Holy the Firm

"And that is why I believe those hollow crisps on the bathroom floor are moths. I think I know moths, and fragments of moths, and chips and tatters of utterly empty moths, in any state. How many of you, I asked the people in my class, which of you want to give your lives and be writers? I was trembling from coffee, or cigarettes, or the closeness of faces all around me. (Is this what we live for? I thought: is light, and living, human eyes?) All hands rose to the question. (You, Nick? Will you? Margaret? Randy? Why do I want them to mean it?) And then I tried to tell them what the choice must mean: you can't be anything else. You must go at your life with a broadax....They had no idea what I was saying. (I have two hands, don't I? And all this energy, for as long as I can remember. I'll do it in the evenings, after skiing, or on the way home from the bank, or after the children are asleep.....)They thought I was raving again. It's just as well."

Quote of the Month-Blue Like Jazz

"We would eat chocolates and smoke cigarettes and read the Bible, which is the only way to do it, if you ask me. Don, the Bible is so good with chocolate. I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It's a chocolate thing."

Quote of the Month/ Thoughts on Journalling

I came across this one in an old journal:

"I have oft said that if a man makes decisions based upon truth, if he prays-then goes; it, whatever he has put his hand to the plough to do, is not a mistake."

Additionally, in 1990 in my journals I had a daily habit of listing 3 things that I was thankful for. Don't know why I stopped doing that. Interesting to see now the things that I listed then.

Quote of the Month-"A Good Story"

"A good story is one that isn't demanding, that proceeds from A to B, and above all doesn't remind us of the bad times, the cardboard patches we used to wear in our shoes, the failed farms, the way people you love just up and die. It tells us instead that hard work and perseverance can overcome all obstacles; it tells lie after lie, and the happy ending is the happiest lie of all."
Kathleen Norris, from Dakota, A Spiritual Geography