Long Distance Relationships

I constantly agonize over how to make it all work, and Olivia solves it in a matter of seconds.

Resurrection Body

Seven Stanzas at Easter
By John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

An unapologetic advertisement for my brother's new book. You know you're interested. Don't resist. Check it out and pre-order here, or maybe here, or somewhere else.

Speechless

Olivia never runs out of things to say.

She's creating new worlds the moment she wakes up.

She's singing new songs until her eyes shut at night.

But when her father walked in with a flower for her,

she was speechless.

She wandered around the house aimlessly

with flower in hand, her mouth shut.

Finally she came back to her father and said,

"Thanks Dad. I've never had my own bouquet before."

Design by the Book

A nice visual narrative on finding inspiration.
These folks paired some Brooklyn artists with a research librarian at the New York Public Library. If you like the idea of old, forgotten sources being remembered and used to create something new, here ya go.
This video is one of four, I think. You can find the other ones if you follow the links on youtube.
Enjoy.

Beauty is in the eye...

Both girls are finally asleep for their afternoon naps, I'm indulging in the moment with a cup of hot chocolate bubbling over with marshmallows, I'm sitting down for "just 5 minutes" on the internet which I know will turn into half an hour if I'm not interrupted, and I find this from the Image Journal blog page. Short, edifying, perfect. My favorite line,"But there’s something, still, about that willingness to offer the imperfect body as an enveloping source of comfort."

Niebur and Love

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true, or beautiful, or good, makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

Reinhld Niebur, from The Irony of American History