Today's Quote: Always More to Know

"Like the human soul, an irrational number is only partly known, and however more is known of either there is always infinitely more to know."

David Berlinski, "A Tour of the Calculus"

Today's Quote: from Thomas Hardy

"When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun."

Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

This is the very first sentence of the Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd. Hardy is worth reading just for his great sentences!

Today's Quote: from Apaloosa

"Life has a way of making the foreseeable that which never happens... and the unforeseeable that which your life becomes."

Everett Hitch (narrating, and played by Viggo Mortensen), from Appaloosa

Today's Quote: Francis Schaeffer

"Christians, of all people, should not be destroyers. We should treat nature with overwhelming respect."

Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man

Today's Quote: Friendship

"Hence we picture lovers face to face, but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead" 

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Today's Quote: God Made Us Cultural Beings

"It would be impossible to think of loving humans and yet hating human culture, of loving individuals and yet hating their music, songs, stories, paintings, games, rituals, decorations, lauguages and hairstyles. God made us cultural beings."

Steve Turner, from Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts

Today's Quote: Nose in the Wind (for Fec)

"Which way you headed, Jeremiah?"
"Canada, maybe. I hear there is land there a man has never seen."
"Well, keep your nose in the wind, and your eyes along the skyline."
"I will do that, Del Gue."

Today's Quote: from Crotch to Eyeball

"You turn down this gift, and they'll slit you, me, Caleb and the horses from crotch to eyeball with a dull deer antler" Del Gue, to Jeremiah Johnson, from Jeremiah Johnson

Today's Quote: Truth

"I don't want to dismay anyone, but Truth harasses me this morning..." Vicki Hearnes, Animal Happiness

Today's Quote - about Clouds

From GM Hopkins, “Hurrahing in Harvest”

"…up above, what wind-walks! what lovely
behavior
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?"


Today in Greensboro it is windy and cool with bright white clouds skimming across the skies from west to east all with the same “floor” or altitude.

Although it was Autumn, Hopkins was noticing a similar thing. The excerpt above is from Hopkins’ great poem, “Hurrahing in Harvest,” this part being about clouds skimming across the sky.

Hopkins liked coining words that fit his need for meaning and meter, and such is wind-walk. The idea, I think, is that of the wind moving the clouds in rank or formation, as soldiers might march across a field. Kind of like outside my window right now.

The clouds seem to be both soft and delicate (like silk), and rough and ready (like sack cloth), at the same time – hence “silk-sack.” These “silk-sack” clouds, “wind-walking” through the skies are "wild and" “wilful,” as in headstrong and unpredictable.

I am reminded of lying on my back with my daughter, back when such things interested her, and watching the clouds, making out the shapes with her. How fast they would change! The dog's head would last just a moment before dissipating or crashing into another shape. There is an exciting unpredictable quality to clouds.

These clouds remind Hopkins of white flour or “meal” as they drift across the sky, ever changing – molding and melting (coming together, coming apart) – as they go (again, like the clouds outside my window).

As to how Hopkins responds to this – next time.

Today's Quote: Peace

"And when Peace here does house...
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit."

from "Peace" Gerard Manley Hopkins

Todays Quote: Steve Turner

"One of the great hindrances to the development of biblically informed mainstream art has been the perception that Christians should make “Christian art” and that “Christian art” is always explicitly religious." Steve Turner, from “Imagine: a Vision for Christians in the Arts.”

Today's Quote

"But Francis (of Assisi) held neither to transmigration of souls nor to pantheism. His view of nature and of man rested on a unique sort of pan-psychism of all things animate and inanimate, designed for the glorification of their transcendent Creator, who, in the ultimate gesture of cosmic humility, assumed flesh, lay helpless in a manger, and hung dying on a scaffold."

Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man.

Today's Quote

"Our generation is hungry- hungry for love, for beauty, for meaning. The "dust of death" covers all. And as in Jeremiah's day, there is with us the unsatisfied longing for a sufficient comforter." 

Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City.

Today's Quote

"What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden."

GM Hopkins

"Spring"