Quote of the Week 286 - The Music of the Earth

The earth has music for those who listen.

--George Santayana

Quote of the Week 285 - Out-Winging Religion

Hammarskjöld’s friends, responsible for publishing his journal after his untimely death, were upset with the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden, who had taken on the English translation of Markings. His draft introduction, circulated for comment before publication, struck them in part as offensive. To no avail, they did what they could to persuade Auden to revise it.

Auden had made the smug posthumous suggestion that Hammarskjöld would have been better off if he had attended church more regularly – like Auden. “Our views on DH’s religion differ from yours,” they wrote to him. “While keeping his roots in the Christian faith, we think that DH may hae ‘out-winged’ what is usually described as religion, reaching a point where it does not matter anymore what label you give it. That needs, we think, just as much, and perhaps even more, discipline than any ecclesiastical routine may be able to give.”

--from the article “Stillness in Action; Reflections on Dag Hammarskjöld” by Roger Lipsey in the November 2013 issue of Shambhala Sun magazine

Quote of the Week 284 - Three Strange Angels

What is the knocking?

What is the knocking at the door in the night?

It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.

Admit them, admit them.

--from the poem Song of a Man Who Has Come Through, by D. H. Lawrence