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I can hear the library humming in the night

@carrieanncartwright / carrieanncartwright.tumblr.com

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"Inherent in this statement [about the reveal of the Afghanistan papers] is the logic that the American people were misled and because they were misled they gave successive administrations their consent to continue prosecuting the war. What is unspoken in this logic is that IF the American people knew how poorly the war was going, they would have mobilize to end it, much as they mobilized to eventually end the Vietnam War. That mobilization never comes for Afghanistan. This isn't because of a lack of "truth" or of "facts." It is because of a lack of interest. ....

The cost of foreign wars no longer lodge in the American consciousness as something we have to own...we pay no war tax and place those costs into our national deficit, having chosen to pass them along to future generations; also we unquestioningly outsource our national defense to a military caste, largely recruited from the same regions and increasingly from the same families, who bear the burden of these muddled conflicts." -Elliot Ackerman, The Fifth Act

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"There's a stigma around millennials, but people forget that millennials fought America's longest war as volunteers." -quoted in The Fifth Act by Elliot Ackerman
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"I'm not one of those fellows who get all restless and depressed if things aren't happening to them all the time. You can't make it too placid for me. Give me regular meals, a good show with decent music every now and then, and one or two pals to totter round with, and I ask no more."-Bertie Wooster, The Inimitable Jeeves
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It is ever a wonder how life keeps unreeling and disasters do not make a stop for us to sit without stirring forevermore. -Charis in the World of Wonders
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The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted   out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

“Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins, from Questions about Angels

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“Marvel” by Kate Baer

To find you sitting at my kitchen counter

swinging your long young legs,

asking about the hummingbird,

where does it go when it rains,

& what kind of food will we have for dinner.

i have never met a more beautiful child.

When you were born I said to the nurse---

I do not know her.

You looked like an alien from another planet

and now you’re here,

as if an angel appeared to Mary

and said can you raise this baby?

Except I am Mary and the angel

& youo’re the daughter who became a lion

in an otherwise soft and 

ordinary life.

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A praising of God is what laughter is, because it lets a human being be human. Laughter is a praise of God, because it lets a human being be a loving person.  Laughter is praise of God because it is a gentle echo of God's laughter, of the laughter that pronounces judgment on all history. Laughter is praise of God because it foretells the eternal praise of God at the end of time, when those who must weep here on earth shall laugh. The laughter of unbelief, of despair, and of scorn, and the laughter of believing happiness are here uncannily juxtaposed, so that before the fulfillment of the promise, one hardly knows whether belief or unbelief is laughing.  God gave us laughter--we should admit this and laugh.

Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace (adapted from words of Karl Rahner) 

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These two lines from two very different prologues make me feel the same emotion in my heart.

“But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made.”

“But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within.”

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I’ve been thinking about how two of my favorite love songs are “Laundry Day” by Dr. Horrible and “Laundry Room” by the Avett Brothers, and I married a dry cleaner. 

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We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.

Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb 

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The old descriptions of heaven as the celestial banquet, the supper of eternal life, the endless convivum, hit close to the truth. Nowhere more than in good and formal company do we catch the praegustatum, the foretaste of what is in store for us.

Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb

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If I had only a single temporal blessing to wish you, I would not hesitate a moment: May you be spared long enough to know at least one long evening of old friends, dark bread, good wine, and strong cheese. If even exile be so full, what must not our fullness be?

Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb. 

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This is not just surprise and pleasure. This is not just beauty sometimes     too hot to touch. This is not a blessing with a beginning     and an end. This is not just a wild summer. This is not conditional.

“What This Is Not” by Mary Oliver

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Maybe this was, in fact, the very definition of intimacy: acting with another person the way you did when you were alone."

Kemper Donovan, The Decent Proposal

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We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

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Some people ask, 'Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights or something like that?' Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general-but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem should acknowledge that.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

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