A little madness . . .
In Thor's mailbox in these Ides of April . . .
It's Thomas Jefferson's birthday. The primary author of The Declaration of Indepence was born today in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of 1743 Albemarle County, Virginia.
Today is the 117th anniversary of Samuel Beckett's birth. The Irish playwright and novelist was born on this date in the 1906 Dublin suburb of Foxrock.
Another Irish writer was born on this date: Seamus Heaney. The poet was born in 1929 Castledawson, Northern Ireland. Both Beckett and Heaney were recipients of the Nobel Prize for literature.
A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also
. . . they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and headed back to the same old roosts
And the same bright airs and wing-stretchings
Each morning.
Death would be like a night spent in the wood:
At first light they’d be back in the house of life.
– Seamus Heaney
Despite our lifetime of experience with change, something within us never stops insisting on stability. Any change, even a change for the better, can feel a little unnerving because it seems to expose our underlying uncertainty about life. We’d rather think we have firm ground to stand on than see clearly that everything is always in transition. We’d rather deny the reality of continual change than accept the way things are. – Pema Chodron.
. . .some activities are worth pursuing simply because they share in the beautiful, the good, or the true. . . the real project of humanity – of understanding ourselves as human beings, making a good world to live in, and striving together toward mutual flourishing – depends paradoxically upon the continued pursuit of [a] ‘splendid uselessness’. – Joseph M. Keegin
A little Madness in the Spring
A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown—Who ponders this tremendous scene—
This whole Experiment of Green—
As if it were his own!