January  13,  2021

PICK  UP  YOUR  CRAYONS

 

I don’t remember my thoughts and feelings
that day, when our kindergarten teacher said,
“Pick up your crayons with all those colors!”
 
I’ve seen little kids in classrooms here and
there - drawing with crayons or colored
pencils and loving every minute of it.
 
Way back, are we all cavemen and women drawing
pictures of animals and parents and brothers and
sisters and grannies on the walls of our being?
 
Then is there a day that arrives – like the arrival of
the Gestapo or dangerous soldiers on our street -
and the artist in all of us is arrested and imprisoned?
 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

January 13,  2021

Thought for the Day

 

“He that will learn to pray,  let him go to sea.” 

George Herbert,

Jacula Prudentum

The modern equivalent of that quote goes this way in a comment by Bergen Evans, “He who would learn to pray, let him be in a small plane in heavy turbulence.”

January 12, 2021

 

QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD

 
In a question and answer period
a kid asked the priest, “How come
there is a picture of Mary in every church?
 
Silence.  He hesitated for a moment.
Then he answered, “Well because
she is important in the Catholic Church.”
 
A little girl raised her hand and said,
“She’s in every church, because
everyone has a mother.”  Silence.

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

January  12,  2021

Thought for the Day

“A humble clerk in Whitehall had a bright idea one day.  In his office were scores of ancient files crammed with out dated and wholly worthless  correspondence.  Why not burn the lot, and thus make room for recent letters?

“Greatly daring, the clerk ventured to suggest this, doing so in true bureaucratic style, for he submitted his proposal in the form of a chit which was duly sent to his immediate superior.

“As that individual heartily agreed, he endorsed that chit, and forwarded it to his superior, who sent it to another department.  Thus the idea worked its way to the supreme authority, and in the fullness of time, the chit returned to the humble clerk.

“’Your recommendation is approved, declared the Big Chief. The files you referred to in your communication of the 8^th may be destroyed provided that copies are made of all papers beforehand.’”

January 11, 2021

 

HOLD  KEEPS  SLIPPING 

What I keep holding onto
seems to keep slipping –
sliding  out of my mind –
creative  ideas, a possible story,
the invisible – a memory –
the stuff of imagination – the spiritual - 
God moments, they keep disappearing
down the drain, nothing seems to be lasting –

time keeps ticking and taking away the present.
Uh oh! There aren’t too many tomorrows left?        
Yet the now called now - the eternal now - is right now. 

 © Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

January  11,  2021

 

Thought for the Day

 

“All children wear the sign: ‘I want to be important now.’  Many of our juvenile delinquency problems arise because nobody reads the sign.”’

 

Dan Pursuit:

co-author of

several books

on delinquency.

January 10, 2021

 

 BOOKSHELF

 

I have this bookshelf
somewhere there in
the left corner of my
brain – with some 20
or so books that have
shaped my life – but
I have to remember
what Robert Coles
said Anna Freud said,
“You have to re-read
those books that are you.”

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021