increase my bewilderment

From Peter Cole's poem, Notes on Bewilderment.

XLVI.
Lord, goes the prayer, increase my bewilderment,
which really means allow me to question
everything, but not to be lost within that
stance to the small flowers of common sense
in season. Increase, Lord, my discontent.

L.
And may my love and language lead me into
that perplexity, and that simplicity,
altering what I might otherwise be.
But let it happen through speech's clarity -
as normal magic, which certain words renew.

These stanzas stood out to me, not least, because they read as a gloss on the wonderful Pip Wilson's blog (Pip speaks against becoming too comfortable - Increase, Lord, my discontent) and on the also wonderful David Dark's thought (the sacredness of questioning everything and what we mean by what we say). I also like this.


Emmanuel Guibert's illustration in the latest New Yorker.

amos & oliver

Thoughts very scattered all day.

I became a bit gloomy but was cheered remembering this promo for another of Emmanuel Guibert's books.

the photographer

The Photographer is an amazing book. I can not do justice to it here (sleepy thoughts, trying to muster my cranial resources for job applications and 'what do I really want to do?' answers).

The NYT review is a good one. The book, in the very story it tells, is as moving and compelling an argument for pacifism as anyone should really need.

This, stolen, once again, from Mr. Dark, sums up some of the effects of The Photographer:
The question of our governing is the question of our liturgy, worship, and witness - the question of what we deem sacred. Does our sense of the sacred include the average Palestinian, the Chinese peasant who builds structures for the Beijing Olympics for slave wages, the Ugandan child soldier? Are some people less sacred than others? Will we stand beside them, look them in the eye and help them? Are people mere numbers, or are they valuable bearers of the image of God? What are we willing to sign off on? What do we underwrite? A determined dwelling on these questions is the way redeeming and revolutionary history is written - this is our liturgy.
The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, p. 198.

So much sacred human-ness in the story, the photos, the drawings.

The typo in the picture-quote is mine.

i missed blogging

I have been having a fairly terrible time at work over the past few weeks. This has raised huge questions for me. Immediate ones to do with work and what I will do next. And then there are problems that I need to try and answer in the long now if I am to live with a stronger sense of calling, vocation and purpose.

We went to a panel discussion that involved the very delightful Emmanuel Guibert the evening of the first day that had been really bad for me in my job. The panel discussed this book, which M. Guibert co-authored with the photographer Didier Lefèvre. It was a blessed relief to be taken so far from my own problems and reminded of the wider world out there, full of need and wonder.

I stole this drawing as a way to try and gather my thoughts and calm myself.