I was thinking about all the tiffs between people that, seemingly, have no end. Sometimes even finding the origin of the dispute is an exercise in futility. What happens at the human micro-level, of course, plays out between groups of people and extends even to the hostilities shared between nations. It reminds me of a bit of dialogue fashioned a while back by that American master, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain. In it he relays a bit of homespun conversation between Huck Finn and Buck Grangerford in his timeless classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The gist of it is Huck trying to ascertain how the long-running blood feud between the Grangerfords and the Sheperdsons all started -- and why it keeps going.
Huck begins the conversation:
"Did you want to kill him, Buck?"
"Well, I bet I did."
"What did he do to you?"
"Him? He never done nothing to me."
"Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?"
"Why, nothing -- only it's on account of the feud."
"What's a feud?"
"Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is?"
"Never heard of it before -- tell me about it."
"Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in -- and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time."
"Has this one been going on long, Buck?"
"Well, I should reckon! It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit -- which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody would."
"What was the trouble about, Buck? -- land?"
"I reckon maybe -- I don't know."
"Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?"
"Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago."
"Don't anybody know?"
"Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place."
Hmmm. While our mental defaults might not be as entrenched -- or trigger-happy -- as that of Buck Grangerford, it's still easy to go through life with a preset frame of mind.
We all have predispositions toward things that we've inherited along the way. When do you know you're defaulting back to those kinds of ideas in your own life?
How do you try to "neutralize" that thinking to keep your mind open and ready for new ideas?
You can let us know by clicking here.
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
The Sensible Art of Ambulation
I don't know if it's age or routine or what, but I don't get outside to walk quite often enough these days. I remember periods in my life when going for a walk just to go for a walk was an anticipated and almost daily occurrence. The chance to brush off the cobwebs in the open air was a welcome respite from the stale oxygen of closed spaces. And there was always a feeling of rejuvenation at the end of my trek, with a renewed focus on whatever the day held next.
I might add too that the particular peregrination of which I speak is unaccompanied. Absent are cell phone, headphones and a playlist of jams, and/or any other device that distracts or preoccupies my thoughts.
Rest assured, you can do without them for a while.
Evidently, not a few creative types have found walking a healthy pursuit, with a dedicated allegiance coming from those who write for a living. Authors from Dickens and Thoreau to Orwell and Nabokov were fond of practicing the simple art of ambulation in their quest to vent their minds and inspire their creativity.
"There is something about the pace of walking and the pace of thinking that goes together," said Geoff Nicholson, author of The Lost Art of Walking, in a BBC interview. "Walking requires a certain amount of attention, but it leaves great parts of the time open to thinking. I do believe once you get the blood flowing through the brain it does start working more creatively. Your senses are sharpened. As a writer, I also use it as a form of problem solving. I'm far more likely to find a solution by going for a walk than sitting at my desk and thinking."
So, do you ever feel like your brain's not firing on all cylinders? Is your thinking sometimes dull and uninspired?
If so, put on your favorite pair of kicks and see where you end up. You may find the fresh air and open spaces therapeutic in ways you never imagined. (And remember, leave the gadgets at home.)
Do you have any favorite treks you make to clear your head and sort out your thinking? You can share your thoughts here: click here!
I might add too that the particular peregrination of which I speak is unaccompanied. Absent are cell phone, headphones and a playlist of jams, and/or any other device that distracts or preoccupies my thoughts.
Rest assured, you can do without them for a while.
Evidently, not a few creative types have found walking a healthy pursuit, with a dedicated allegiance coming from those who write for a living. Authors from Dickens and Thoreau to Orwell and Nabokov were fond of practicing the simple art of ambulation in their quest to vent their minds and inspire their creativity.
"There is something about the pace of walking and the pace of thinking that goes together," said Geoff Nicholson, author of The Lost Art of Walking, in a BBC interview. "Walking requires a certain amount of attention, but it leaves great parts of the time open to thinking. I do believe once you get the blood flowing through the brain it does start working more creatively. Your senses are sharpened. As a writer, I also use it as a form of problem solving. I'm far more likely to find a solution by going for a walk than sitting at my desk and thinking."
So, do you ever feel like your brain's not firing on all cylinders? Is your thinking sometimes dull and uninspired?
If so, put on your favorite pair of kicks and see where you end up. You may find the fresh air and open spaces therapeutic in ways you never imagined. (And remember, leave the gadgets at home.)
Do you have any favorite treks you make to clear your head and sort out your thinking? You can share your thoughts here: click here!
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Right Under Our Noses
While our taste in literature or music or movies is often deeply personal, it's also governed in many respects by the trends and cultural sway of society. We get caught up in a craze of sorts, and we're off and running, watching episode after episode of some TV program or reading in rapid succession all the books we can find in a certain sci-fi or period-piece series.
If we try to disengage from the current and the wildly popular, we may have to dig pretty deep to get back to some of the earliest stuff we experienced under the banner of "media" -- long before the word was a catchall for every kind of human expression.
Take poetry, for instance. Remember studying poems in grade school? All those flowery rhythms and rhymes and extravagant ideas never seemed to do the trick for me. On the other hand, consider Alfred Lord Tennyson's stirring description of a British cavalry unit that is ordered to cross a valley to capture Russian cannons at the other end.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Poetry has the power to move us, to motivate us, to open our eyes. It's often closer than we think, too, like the hymnbook. I know it's tough for men to sing. Some of us never got beyond that cracking-voice thing that happened in junior high or middle school, but if you don't sing -- or at least read the words while others are singing -- you can miss a lot. As an example, read this hymn text slowly; think about the imagery, and you might get a sense of how Jesus overcame Thomas' unbelief:
These Things Did Thomas Count as Real
These things did Thomas count as real:
The warmth of blood, the chill of steel,
The grain of wood, the heft of stone,
The last frail twitch of flesh and bone.
The vision of his skeptic mind
Was keen enough to make him blind
To any unexpected act
Too large for his small world of fact.
His reasoned certainties denied
That one could live when one had died,
Until his fingers read like Braille
The marking of the spear and nail.
May we, O God, by grace believe
And thus the risen Christ receive,
Whose raw imprinted palms reached out
And beckoned Thomas from his doubt.
Poetry. Its power is undeniable, but for many of us it's an acquired taste. Without a melody to hum along and carry the words, it's easy to dismiss the subtle attention to detail of a well-wrought poem or a tightly constructed hymn.
Sometimes great poetry -- and the meaning it conveys -- is closer than we think, like in the pew, right under our noses
What are you reading or watching or listening to these days? Does it beat the standard fare media companies are offering the masses?
Click here and let us know.
If we try to disengage from the current and the wildly popular, we may have to dig pretty deep to get back to some of the earliest stuff we experienced under the banner of "media" -- long before the word was a catchall for every kind of human expression.
Take poetry, for instance. Remember studying poems in grade school? All those flowery rhythms and rhymes and extravagant ideas never seemed to do the trick for me. On the other hand, consider Alfred Lord Tennyson's stirring description of a British cavalry unit that is ordered to cross a valley to capture Russian cannons at the other end.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Poetry has the power to move us, to motivate us, to open our eyes. It's often closer than we think, too, like the hymnbook. I know it's tough for men to sing. Some of us never got beyond that cracking-voice thing that happened in junior high or middle school, but if you don't sing -- or at least read the words while others are singing -- you can miss a lot. As an example, read this hymn text slowly; think about the imagery, and you might get a sense of how Jesus overcame Thomas' unbelief:
These Things Did Thomas Count as Real
These things did Thomas count as real:
The warmth of blood, the chill of steel,
The grain of wood, the heft of stone,
The last frail twitch of flesh and bone.
The vision of his skeptic mind
Was keen enough to make him blind
To any unexpected act
Too large for his small world of fact.
His reasoned certainties denied
That one could live when one had died,
Until his fingers read like Braille
The marking of the spear and nail.
May we, O God, by grace believe
And thus the risen Christ receive,
Whose raw imprinted palms reached out
And beckoned Thomas from his doubt.
Poetry. Its power is undeniable, but for many of us it's an acquired taste. Without a melody to hum along and carry the words, it's easy to dismiss the subtle attention to detail of a well-wrought poem or a tightly constructed hymn.
Sometimes great poetry -- and the meaning it conveys -- is closer than we think, like in the pew, right under our noses
What are you reading or watching or listening to these days? Does it beat the standard fare media companies are offering the masses?
Click here and let us know.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)
Posts
