Compass Vol. 13 #4, Points

Points, Volume 13 #4

COULD THIS BE LE P'TIT GARS ?!!
The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects....Hesitant, he does not utter words lightly. When his task is accomplished and his work is done the people all say, "It happened to us naturally."

--Lao Tzu

SUFFERING LITTLE CHILDREN
Our culture feels contempt for children. Children have vanished from our streets except for the half-hours when school opens and closes for the day. We are ruthless with them. We have made it dangerous for them to walk around freely or to play in the open where their neighbours can see them and get to know them....Nothing that we value in society can continue if those who are now children do not learn to value it too.

--Jill Paton Walsh

WE'RE IN IT TOGETHER
Nobody educates anybody, just as nobody really educates himself. Human beings are educated in communion with each other, with the world as their intermediary.

--Paulo Freire

THEN, I MAY BE STILL ON THE PATH!
Thomas Keating: "The spiritual journey is not a success story, but a series of diminutions of self."

A MORE BENIGN TRAP, TO BE SURE
People have thought that it was the duty of the historian to judge the past and instruct the present for the benefit of the future. The present essay is more modest. It merely wants to show what it was really like.

--Leopold von Ranke

A NICE PROBLEM TO HAVE
A bit of Scripture we don't remember seeing before: "Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them living together; for their possessions were so great they could not live together." (Gen 13:2-5)

AH, 'TIS TRUE
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.

--Francis Bacon (1561-1620)

SO, TOO, IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been recognized.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

ESPECIALLY AFTER FORTY!
What a person needs in gardening is a cast-iron back--with a hinge in it.

--Charles Warner (1829-1900)

UNCLEAN
When a group of homosexual elected officials visited President Clinton recently, they were greeted by men wearing rubber hospital gloves. Ann Wroe of The Economist comments: "Because they could not put on overalls and caps and masks, too, they simply put on gloves. But gloves make their point strongly enough even if they are ineffectual against infection. They say the wearer is superior, that he is clean, that the world is something he touches disdainfully with anaesthetized fingers. People who wear gloves are exempted from shaking hands. And they are excused from feelings."

WE'RE VERY MODERN... AND VERY WRONG
The contemporary Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas quotes Pascal: "To say `This is my place in the sun.'...That is how the usurpation of the whole world began."

A PERSONAL JOURNEY
From my earliest childhood God has hidden himself and hides himself still, but now I am happy that this is so.

--Ruth Burrows, Carmelite nun

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