A prayer of John Wesley

I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
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From “Common Prayer”. I mostly cannot pray this prayer.

Fahrenheit 451 #7- On the death of someone

“Listen,” said Granger, taking his arm and walking with him, holding aside the bushes to let him pass.  “When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor.  He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands.  And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for all the things he did.  I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did.  He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did… I’ve never gotten over his death.  Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died.  How many jokes are mission from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands.  He shaped the world.  He did things to the world.  The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”

Montag walked in silence.  “Millie, Millie,” he whispered.  “Millie.”

“What?”

“My wife, my wife.  Poor Millie, poor, poor, Millie.  I can’t remember anything.  I think of her hands but I don’t see them doing anything at all.  They just hang there at her sides or they lay there on her lap or there’s a cigarette in them, but that’s all.”

Montag turned and glanced back.

What did you give to the city, Montag?

Ashes.

What did the others give to each other?

Nothingness.

Granger stood looking back with Montag.  “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said.”  A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made.  Or a garden planted.  Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.  It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.  The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said.  The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all: the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

____________________

Conversation between Granger and Montag, p. 156.

Fahrenheit 451 #6- What have you to offer?

“I don’t belong with you,” said Montag, at last, slowly. “I’ve been an idiot all the way.”

“We’re used to that,” said Granger. “We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn’t be here. When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage. I struck a fireman when he came to burn my library years ago. I’ve been running ever since. You want to join us, Montag?”

“Yes.”

“What have you to offer?”

“Nothing. I thought I had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe a little of Revelation, but I haven’t even that now.”

“The Book of Ecclesiastes would be fine. Where was it?”

“Here.” Montag touched his head.

“Ah.” Granger smiled and nodded.

“What’s wrong? Isn’t that all right?” said Montag.

“Better than all right; perfect!” Granger turned to the Reverend. “Do we have a Book of Ecclesiastes?”

“One. A man named Harris in Youngstown.”

“Montag.” Granger took Montag’s shoulder firmly. “Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes. See how important you’ve become in the last minute!”

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I’ve read this section (p. 150-151) at least 5 times today. Each time, my eyes well up.

Mosquito

I was climbing up the sliding board
When suddenly I felt
A mosquito bite my bottom
And it raised a big red welt.

So I said to that mosquito,
“I’m sure you wouldn’t mind
If I took a pair of tweezers
And I tweezered your behind!”

He shriveled up his body
And he shuffled to his feet,
And he said, “I’m awfully sorry
But a skeeter’s got to eat!
Still, there are mosquito manners,
And I must have just forgot ’em.
And I swear I’ll never never never
Bite another bottom.”

But a minute later Archie Hill
And Buck and Theo Brown
Were horsing on the monkey bars,
Hanging upside down.
They must have looked delicious
From a skeeter’s point of view
‘Cause he bit ’em on the bottoms,
Archie, Buck and Theo too!

You could hear ’em goin’ HOLY!
You could hear ’em goin’ WHACK!
You could hear ’em cuss and holler,
Goin’ smack, smack, smack.

A mosquito’s awful sneaky,
A mosquito’s mighty sly,
But I never never never
Thought a skeeter’d tell a lie.

“Mosquito”
J Patrick Lewis

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —

I’ve heard it in the chillest land —
And on the strangest Sea —
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of Me.

Emily Dickinson

i thank You God for most this amazing day

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e e cummings

Fahrenheit 451 #5- Why books are important

Faber began, “Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.

“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway, telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often… So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life.

“The second reason is leisure.

“Oh, but we have plenty of off-hours,” replied Montag.

“Off-hours, yes,” said Faber. “But time to think? If you’re not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can’t think of anything else but the danger, then you’re playing some game or sitting in some room where you can’t argue with the four-wall televisor.”

“Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.”

_____________________

Conversation between the professor, Faber and Montag, p. 83-84.

Fahrenheit 451 #4- friendship

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed.  As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

P. 71

Middle Class Blues

He has everything.
A beautiful young wife.
A comfortable home.
A secure job.
A velvet three-piece suite.
A metallic-silver car.
A mahogany cocktail cabinet.
A rugby trophy.
A remote-controlled music centre.
A set of gold clubs under the hallstand.
A fair-haired daughter learning to walk.

What he is afraid of most
and what keeps him tossing some nights
on the electric underblanket,
listening to the antique clock
clicking with disapproval from the landing,
are the stories that begin:
He had everything.
A beautiful young wife.
A comfortable home.
A secure job.
Then one day.

“Middle Class Blues”
By Dennis O’Driscoll

i carry your heart

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

“i carry your heart”

e e cummings