MYSTERY! 

EVERYONE LOVES 

A MYSTERY

Quote for Today  September 24,  2011

"The essence of tragedy is to know the end."

Charles W. Ferguson, Naked to Mine Enemies: The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, Little Brown, 1958

P.S. Check the quote for the day for September 23, 2011

IT'S  THE  CURVES

Quote for Today  September 23,  2011

"God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road."

Isak Dinesen, Recalled on her death, September 7, 1962

GRAVEYARD   BLESSING

As you stand there on the lumpy,
clumpy green grass of a cemetery -
may the prayers and blessings of this
sacred place resonate and remind you
of both the boundaries and slipping
through those boundaries into eternal life.


May your tears become holy water falling
on the grave or graves of your loved ones.


May your loved ones come back once again -
if just for a moment -
just for a few sacred moments
in this here and this now.


May you see them come running towards you.


May you see scenes of eating bread, drinking wine,
beer, toasting one another with clinking glasses.


May memories of playing cards - walking,
talking, holding hands with them, hearing
sounds of laughter and song again
from the days of your youth.


May these graveyard moments bring you to pray -
bring you into the presence of God.
“O God because you are everlasting,
may we trust that You will bring all of us,
sinners and saints, into Your everlasting embrace.


“O Christ because you are resurrection -
bless us now with the hope to know
that nobody is here in this sacred cemetery,
only sorrows and sadness and solid stone
memories - fading names and dates
on so many aging tombstones.”


May we then be blessed to move our eyes
from looking down at green grass and white stones
and look up to see blue skies above - but to know
that the sky is just a blue ceiling underneath
a great, big, wide, polished wooden dance
floor of the place called, “Heaven!”


May we be blessed to hear the pounding sounds
coming down to earth 
from that great big shellacked wooden floor -
the moving feet 
of a hundred million Irish step dancers -
dancing in tune with a hundred thousand
fiddlers, pipers and drummers,
inviting everyone else into the Eternal Dance of God
the Trinity of Music, Smile and Dance and All. Amen.



© 101 And Then Some More Irish Blessings and Prayers, Andy Costello

ON  NOT

GIVING UP

Quote for Today  September 22, 2011

"Giving up is the ultimate tragedy."

Robert J. Donovan [1912-2003]

WOMEN  AT  PRAYER

Quote for Today - September 21, 2011

"I didn't know what she was saying when she moved her lips in a Baptist church or a Catholic cathedral or, less often, in a synagogue, but it was obvious that God could be found anywhere."

Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman, 1969

GETTING TO KNOW 

THE REAL ME 

IN ME

Quote for Today  - September 20, 2011

"We neither get better or worse as we get older, but more like ourselves."

Robert Anthony, Think Again, Berkeley, 1986

THE OUR FATHER 

HAS VARIOUS 

SHADES  

OF MEANING 

Quote for Today  - September 18,  2011


"My father died
many years ago,
and yet when something special
happens to me,
I talk to him secretly
not really knowing
whether he hears,
but it makes me feel better
to half believe it."


Natasha Josefowitz, Is This Where I Was Going?, Warner 1983