Compass Vol. 14 #1, Points

Points, Volume 14 #1

IT'S TOO SIMPLE!
When asked by an inquirer if he were a God or a magician, the Buddha responded that he was neither. "What are you?" the person insisted. "I am awake," said the Buddha.

LIMELIGHT IN THE DESERT
Confound those who have said our witty remarks before us.

--St. Jerome

BUT WE DON'T, DO WE?
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each [one's] life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

NO--JUST DIE FOR THEM
Cosimo de Medici: "We read that we are to forgive our enemies, but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."

IT'S THAT SIMPLE--AND TRUE
A bit of Scripture we sometimes forget: "For the whole of the law is summed up in a single commandment, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another." (Galatians 5:13-14)

ON PARISH COUNCILS
No sacralization without representation.

REAR-VIEW MIRROR RIDES AGAIN
Heard over lunch: "'Postmodern' is a very modern description. It means I, a modern, don't yet know how to let the new thing be itself. It's like saying 'iron horse' in the early 1800s for locomotives, or 'horseless carriage' in the early 1900s for cars."

POSTMODERNISM REJOICES
...Upon this gifted age, in its dark hours,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts...They lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric...

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

GEE, I THOUGHT IT WAS THE POPE!
This new world order is being constructed not on behalf of the workers and their families but for the benefit of a corporate and financial elite that has no loyalty except to the bottom line.

--Pat Buchanan,
Republican presidential candidate

CUTTING REALITY TO FIT THE IMAGE
Ramsay Cook: "Nationalism is as much about forgetting as it is about remembering."

KITCHEN WISDOM
A pinch of mothers is worth a pound of priests.

--Ancient Portuguese proverb

COMMON SENSE REVOLUTION?
American statesman Robert C. Winthrop wrote in 1881: "The poor must be wisely and liberally cared for, so that mendicity shall not be tempted into mendacity, nor want exasperated into crime."

RARE HONESTY
James Carse on teaching as a vocation: "A professor [I] once had,...immediately after entering a lecture hall one day, looked at his students, closed his notes, and walked out saying, 'I'm sorry. I'm empty.' It was at that moment, with those memorable words, [I] knew that [I] wanted, above all, to be a teacher."

WHY IS THAT MAN'S FACE RED?
Bernard of Clairvaux: "The person who undertakes his own spiritual direction has a fool for a teacher."

DESTRUCTIVE DUALISMS
I would like to purge my own mind and language of such terms as spiritual, physical, metaphysical, and transcendental--all of which imply that the Creation is divided by fault lines into "levels" that can readily be peeled apart and judged by human beings. I believe that the Creation is one continuous fabric comprehending simultaneously what we mean by "spirit" and what we mean by "matter."

--Wendell Berry

"Points" welcomes small, interesting items from readers. If we use yours, you will get a one-year subscription to Compass for yourself or a friend. Follow this link to send us an item for Points.