Furry neighbor friends
Triangle girl
Office helper…that’s a full inbox
Attention and randomness and resilience
Krista Tippett: Here’s something else you wrote: “The outline of our lives, like the candle’s flame, is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that, along with our responses to them, determine our fate.” You say that we are driven to see patterns and create patterns where the patterns aren’t there. But it seems to me that you’re also presenting our responses as mattering. There is randomness, and then you talk about that even though that is true, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized does make a difference. It does shift things.
Leonard Mlodinow: …little things make a big difference. And what they really do is they raise opportunities for you. Or they raise challenges. And the course of your life depends on how you react to those opportunities and challenges that the randomness presents to you. If you’re awake and paying attention, you will find that things happen. They might seem good, they might seem bad. But the important thing is how you reacted to it. (emphasis mine)
“It will flame out, like shining from shook foil”
God’s Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
“God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Public Domain. Read on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, July 6, 2019.
4th of July
He can barely contain himself…
History for the Fourth of July
“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
Please read this speech of Frederick Douglass and try to remember
this was delivered in 1852. How much still applies today…?
My new favorite cuppa joe
I was recently introduced to the most delectable coffee drink right in the comfort of my own home. No fancy stuff just good strong java jazzed with a dollop (amount adjusted to personal preference) of the secret ingredient…sweetened condensed milk! Who knew? As it turns out lots and lots of people knew because various other cultures (e.g. Vietnamese, Spanish, Thai, just to name a few) flavor their brews this distinctive way; because I didn’t know doesn’t mean that no one did. Delicious, creamy, and, yes, richly sweet. It tickles all my tastebuds in a delightful way. If you want a cup of tastiness, give it a try.
Some of our neighbors stopped by
Magic on the trail?
Remember, the trail is not a race track
Remembering John Wesley’s Rule
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.
–in honor of John Wesley’s birthday (first posted in 2011)
Library of David Shepherd’s books
What an amazing writer is David Shepherd! He is creative, prolific, delightful, and diverse (homilies, autobiographies, children’s Bible stories, and detective stories–often with naughty bits as well as who-done-its). I am honored to have his books on my library shelf. Thank you for your inspiration and wit, David. I remain in awe.
Allergic reaction
Poison oak? Poison ivy? Poison sumac? I don’t know what it was but it sure did itch! This is my hand over a period of two weeks. I also had it on my arm and leg but not as intensely. Finally, it’s feeling better.
Here is an update photo after four weeks. It’s almost completely healed. I’m thankful.
attentiontolife.com 