What is all your argument?

poetry, politics, reality,

POLITICS

You say a thousand things,
Persuasively,
And with strange passion hotly I agree,
And praise your zest,
And then
A blackbird sings
On April lilac, or fieldfaring men,
Ghostlike, with loaded wain,
Come down the twilit lane
To rest,
And what is all your argument to me?

Oh yes — I know, I know,
It must be so —
You must devise
Your myriad policies,
For we are little wise,
And must be led and marshalled, lest we keep
Too fast a sleep
Far from the central world’s realities.
Yes, we must heed —
For surely you reveal
Life’s very heart; surely with flaming zeal
You search our folly and our secret need;
And surely it is wrong
To count my blackbird’s song,
My cones of lilac, and my wagon team,
More than a world of dream.

But still
A voice calls from the hill —
I must away —
I cannot hear your argument to-day.

-John Drinkwater, 1917

Van Gogh, Lilac Bush

“Christians and Others”

poetry, prayer

CHRISTIANS AND OTHERS

1. All go to God in their distress,
seek help and pray for bread and happiness,
deliverance from pain, guilt and death.
All do, Christians and others.

2. All go to God in His distress,
find him poor, reviled without shelter or bread,
watch him tormented by sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand by God in His agony.

3. God goes to all in their distress,
satisfies body and soul with His bread,
dies, crucified for all, Christians and others
and both alike forgiving.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945

 

 

Their greatest disloyalty.

church, philosophy, quotes, , , , ,

“We must be convinced that there are no such things as ‘Christian principles.’ There is the Person of Christ, who is the principle of everything. But if we wish to be faithful to Him, we cannot dream of reducing Christianity to a certain number of principles (though this is often done), the consequences of which can be logically deduced.

“This tendency to transform the work of the Living God into a philosophical doctrine is the constant temptation of theologians, and also of the faithful, and their greatest disloyalty is when they transform the action of the Spirit which brings forth fruit in themselves into an ethic, a new law, into ‘principles’ which only have to be ‘applied.’”

― Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom

Collards and sweet peas.

food and cooking, my garden, ,

I always think of collard greens as the meatiest sort. (Of the leafy greens I have commonly had in the garden I would rank kale as next most hefty, then Swiss chard and finally spinach.) But they were lightweight enough that the wind was able to blow a few of the topmost chopped leaves away off the table where I was working. After removing the whole 5-foot row of collards I had such a big pile, I had decided to do the first stage of processing on the patio, where the spring breeze was aggressive.

These greens were incredibly clean; only about five aphids total had to be flicked off when I was looking over each of dozens of leaves. I chopped and blanched them and put four quarts in the freezer, keeping out another quart or so to use soon.

I still have kale and Swiss chard in my planter boxes, and am planning to use the space where the collards were for ground cherries I started in the greenhouse.

Sweet peas are coming on so I brought a bunch of them in, too.
It’s the season for Garden Love.