One Will Never Experience Or Know Everything

Life Encompassed

How often I have said,
“This will never do,”
Of ways of feeling that now
I trust in, and pursue!

Do traverses tramped in the past,
My own, criss-crossed as I forge
Across from another quarter
Speak of a life encompassed?

Well, life is not research.
No one asks you to map the terrain,
Only to get across it
In new ways, time and again.

How many such, even now,
I dismiss out of hand
As not to my purpose, not
Unknown, just unexamined.

Donald Davie from Collected Poems

Mark Jarman, in Body and Soul: Essays on Poetry, comments: This poem reminds me of the limitations of critical understanding and opinion, and also of the importance and necessity of growth in the life of the mind.

Annie Lamott on Hate

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

--Annie Lamott Traveling Mercies; although on page 22 of Bird by Bird she attributes this quote to "my priest friend Tom"

Faith to Move Mountains, Prayer to Move the Hand of God

“Have faith in God. Amen I tell you that whoever says to this mountain ‘Be raised and thrown into the sea’ and has no doubts in his heart but believes that what he says is happening, it shall be his. So I tell you all what you pray and ask for, trust that you get it and it shall be yours. And when you stand praying forgive if you have anything against anyone so your Father in Heaven may also forgive you your wrongs.” (112)

Jesus in Mark’s gospel, translated by Reynolds Price in Three Gospels.

The video below from the Charlie Rose show features Reynolds Price: