Author: itoccurstocp

Photo of a plastic heart found on a beach walk. Text (which turns out to be a 5-7-5 syllable haiku) from Give Yours4elf To Love by Kate Wolf — link below.

Photo taken following our recent ice-storm. I couldn’t make a choice between the two texts, thus, the two-fer.

Photo taken down the street from home in our recent ice-capade. Text is from a poem by Christina Rossetti, later transformed into a song that is in most church hymnals.

My favorite version of the song is by Austin local Kelly Willis:

https://www.facebook.com/brucerobisonmusic/videos/in-the-bleak-midwinter-by-kelly-willis/1349622901735844/

“Again, and again, we find ourselves deeply distressed, because there is so much that is dependent upon us as individuals carrying specific responsibilities within a world which is small and compact and demanding. So overwhelming is this kind of pressure upon us that we are tempted to rely, despite all our adequacies, upon our own strength.  Again, and again, we say to ourselves, if I do not depend upon myself, if I do not depend upon that which I am able to do for myself and those for whom I am responsible, then there is no other source upon which I may be dependent.  And even as we say it, and as we feel it, our minds are flooded with multitudinous instances in which strength did come to us that was not of our making, a lift to our burden did come, even though it could not be measured by anything that we ourselves were doing. All around us there are these surprises of kindly interference manifesting the grace of life and the tenderness and the mercy of God.”

Howard Thurman – The Centering Moment

Photo taken recently from the parking garage at work. A blue sky except for a few short lines like this one just struck me as interesting..

Photo taken on a recent run — but I’m serious about the duct tape.

Photo taken around the most recent full moom.

Another of those accidental photos, likely taken in my pocket.

In furtherance of the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend …

Photo taken recently in Galveston. Text is from Howard Thurman, an early influence on King and his committent to non-violence. King was clearly one of Thurman’s “few…who dare trust their fate in its hands.”

I have always liked Martin Luther King, Jr.’s quote:

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” 

This is King’s statement akin to an 1853 sermon text from abolitionist Theodore Parker, who said:

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe.  The arc is a long one.  My eye reaches but little ways.  I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight.  I can divine it by conscience.  And from what I see, I am sure it bends toward justice.”

I relate more to Parker’s longer version as it exposes the sentiment as it seems to me less of a certainty, more of a hope.  But of course that sureness is what made King, King.  In the face of George Wallace, Lester Maddox, the Ku Klux Klan, Bull Connor, and what was waiting on the other side of the Pettus Bridge in Selma, King placed absolute trust not only in the existence but also the righteousness of a Higher Power.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”