March 28, 2022

 

 MY  DEMONS

 

 

Found the following scribbled in one of my notebooks, “In Edward Albee’s play, ‘A Delicate Balance’, Mother says we sleep to let the demons out.’”

 

Never saw the play, nor do I know where I found that comment. All I know is that it must have hit me then that I have demons and I realize it also hits me now.

 

Demons ….

 

Never really thought much about demons, Never read much about demons. I do know that the Bible mentions demons.

 

Demons….

 

Well, what about them?

 

Who has done work on demons? Is there a good book on them? Are there lists and types of demons?

 

I don’t know.

 

Next question: do I believe in them?

 

I must think so, because when I read Albee’s words, I found myself asking, “Well, what are my demons?”

 

If according to Albee, sleep is the key, then the stuff of my dream are greed and need, laziness and jealousy, lust and fear.  Those are main energies – capital sin stuff. They are the stuff of my demons – procrastination but mostly fear.

 

They are there when I wake up in jumble of forgotten things I failed to do -  and sometimes – but very rarely does the demon of anger appear.

 

So I don’t feel like the characters in the Gospel of Mark – who seem to have whole boatloads  of demons – demons that shriek out [1:24] and who want a wild ride in pigs down a hill side and into the lake to drown [5:13].

 

According to the Enneagram my sin is pride.

 

Come to think about this -after reading Albee’s comment once again. It fits. Albee is right. I want to be loved and liked and I fear making mistakes in public and being rejected. Who wants that stuff?

 

So I hope this piece is something you can try on as well as me. Amen.

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

March  28,  2022

 

Thought for Today

 

“What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.”

Aristotle

March 27, 2022

TECHNICOLOR

 

 

How do you see life?   In black and white or in technicolor?

 

How do you dream? In black and white or in technicolor?

 

I’ve heard people say that they dream in black and white.  I didn’t believe them – because I assume dreams are scenes from everyday life – much of the time – jumbled up – but based on real life – and real life is in technicolor.

 

Movies have been in black and white – and television programs – and you can still catch them that way.

 

Then there’s the comment that some movies have been ruined – because they have been colorized.

 

One day my nephew Michael said something that really surprised me.  He died back in 1977 – so I don’t remember if they had a color TV at the time or not.  

 

I had taken him and his brother and one sister at the time to the movies.

 

The movie was Popi.

 

We got home and at supper his dad asked, “Well, how did you like the movie”?

 

Michael said something that intrigued me. He said, “The movie began in black and white and then switched to technicolor.”

 

I didn’t notice that as I watched that movie with them that afternoon.

 

Afterwards I checked it out. The whole movie was in color.

 

I asked myself, “What got a small kid to say, ‘The movie  began in black and white and then switched to color.”

 

So I asked Michael, “When did it switch to color?”

 

He answered, “When they left  Spanish Harlem and moved to Florida.”

 

How do you see life: in black and white or in technicolor?

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

 

 

March  27,  2022

 

Thought for Today

 

“The heart speaks in many ways.”

Racine

 March 26, 2022

Reflection

 March 26, 2022

Thought for Today

 

“Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.”

 

Jean Anouilh

 March 25, 2022

 Thought for Today

 

“Returning in 1894 from an inspiring trip to Pikes Peak in Colorado, a minor New England poet named Katharine Lee Bates wrote a verse she titled ‘America.’ It was printed the following year in a publication in Boston to commemorate the Fourth of July.
 
“Lynn Sherr, the ABC News correspondent, has written a timely and deliciously researched book how that verse was written and edited and how it was fitted to a hymn called ‘Materna,’ written about the same time by Samuel Augustus Ward, whom the poet never met.  In America the Beautiful: The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation’s Favorite Song, Sherr reveals rewriting by Bates that shows the value of working over a lyric.
 
“’O beautiful for halcyon skies,’ the poem began. Halcyon is a beautiful word, based on the Greek name for the bird, probably a kingfisher, that ancient legend had nesting in the sea during the winter solstice and calming the waves. It means ‘calm, peaceful’ and all those happy things, but the word is unfamiliar and does not evoke the West. Spacious, however, not only describes Big Sky country but also alliterates with skies, so Bates changed it.
 
“The often unsung third stanza contained a zinger at the acquisition of wealth: ‘America! America! / God shed his grace on thee/ till selfish gain no long strain / The banner of the free!’ Sherr writes that Bates, disillusioned with the Gilded Age’s excesses, ‘wanted to purify America’s great wealth, to channel what  she had originally called “selfish gain” into more ennobled causes.’ The poet took another crack at the line that der-ogated the  profit motive, and the stanza now goes:  ‘America! America / May God thy gold refine /  Till all success be nobleness / And every gain divine!’
 
“The line that needed editing the most was the flat and dispiriting conclusion: ‘God shed his grace on thee / Till nobler men keep once again / Thy whiter jubilee!’   That cast an aspersion on the current generation, including whoever was singing the lyric. The wish for ‘nobler men’ to come in the future ended the song, about to be set to Ward’s hymn, on a self-depreciating note.
 
“In 1904, ten years after her firsts draft, Kathleen Lee Bates revised the imperfect last lines of the final stanza.  The new image called up at the end not only reminds the singers of the ‘spacious skies’ that began the song but also elevates the final theme to one of unity and tolerance.  Her improvement makes all the difference, especially in times like these:
 
           America! America!
           God shed his grace on thee
           And crown thy good with brotherhood
           From sea to shining sea!”