Hi everyone, Garrison Keillor’s reports from Lake Woebegone are gorgeous examples of writing by association. One subject leads to another and that to another until the writer and reader find themselves miles from where they began until, in the hands of a master like Keillor, everyone winds up back home.
Association routinely occurs in our own conversations. We start to tell something to a friend — say, crows in the yard. We hardly finish the first sentence before the friend leaps in with a story that your subject brings to mind — perhaps, the nursery rhyme, “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.” The friend interrupts himself with a different story, inspired by association with the first. That often leads to another and another until the first speaker can no longer find a way to finish what he began. The subject is now about Julia Child’s kitchen in the Smithsonian. There’s no way to get back to crows unless you’re as gifted as a Keillor. That form of association can be annoying or entertaining, depending on your frame of mind. Association can also be put to work by any writer who picks up a pen, taps his teeth with it, and ponders what to write about today. At workshops I sometimes ask writers (or students) to write down a word and list below it ten other words or subjects that the word brings to mind. Next, pick a word from the list of ten, use it to start a second list, and again jot down ten words or subjects that you associate with the second word. Not satisfied yet? Choose something from the second list and make a third one. When you read what you’ve placed on the third list, you may be surprised at how far you’ve drifted from the first word you chose. That’s association. It’s also now a list of thirty possible ideas to get you started on something to write. The whole exercise doesn’t take any longer than to get from crows in the yard to Julia Childs’s kitchen. And like good stretch socks, the subjects can fit a lot of needs: a poem, a story, or maybe a whole book.
“Do we speak with the Lord about this? When I make a mistake, am I willing to repent and retrace my steps? Or do I pretend everything is okay and go through life wearing a mask, concerning myself only about appearing good and righteous?”
Pope Francis October 10’23
Do I make amends? asap? Do I acknowledge my mistakes? Hide them with a mask? Stone others when I have done the exact same thing? Do I embrace forgiveness and humbly acknowledge my ineptitude?
Do I heal my demons and acknowledge their evil shadows?
“The more we turn together to the Lord in prayer, the more we feel that it is he who purifies us and unites us beyond our differences. Christian unity grows in silence before the cross, just like the seeds we will receive, which represent the different gifts bestowed by the Holy Spirit on the various traditions: it is up to us to sow them, in the certainty that God alone brings about the growth.” Pope Francis
It’s the birthday of the religious leader Desmond Tutu, born in Klerksdorp, South Africa, (1931). He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his role in the opposition to apartheid in South Africa. In 1986, he was elected the first black archbishop of Cape Town, the head of South Africa’s 1,600,000-member Anglican Church. And in 1995, South African President Nelson Mandela appointed him head of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, which investigated apartheid-era human rights abuses. Tutu said: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.” He also said: “How does peace come? Peace doesn’t come because allies agree. Allies are allies — they already agree! Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes.” from the Poetry Almanac Oct 7,’23
“Silence is essential for the journey of Christian unity. Indeed, it is fundamental to prayer, and ecumenism begins with prayer and is sterile without it. Jesus himself prayed that his disciples “may all be one”. The silence that is prayer enables us to accept the gift of unity “as Christ wills it… by the means he chooses”, not as the fruit of our own efforts and according to purelyhuman criteria.”
“This reminds us that silence, in the ecclesial community, makes fraternal communication possible, where the Holy Spirit draws together points of view, because he is harmony. To be synodal is to welcome one another like this, in the knowledge that we all have something to share and to learn, gathering together to listen to the “Spirit of truth” in order to know what the Lord “is saying to the churches”.” Pope Francis
“Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” —Pico Iyer 10/5/23
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2023
“In a world full of noise, we are no longer accustomed to silence; indeed sometimes we struggle with it, because silence forces us to face God and ourselves. Yet it lies at the foundation of the word and of life.”
Garrison Keillor 10/4/23 Garrison Keillor and Friends I imagine that someday at America’s boarding gates, after the wheelchair passengers are boarded and Those Who Need Extra Time, then active military, there will be other categories of merit to be given precedence, Persons Traumatized By Flight, Persons In Need Of Affirmation, Persons Trapped In Bad Relationships, and why not add Unappreciated Poets and Third-Grade Teachers to the list. And then you let the Fat Cats board for First Class, and then the peons and peasants.
I am a Fat Cat, to tell the truth, and I’m sheepish about it so I walk, eyes averted, down the empty Elitist lane between long lines of the underprivileged, and I come to the TSA agent and am eyeballed and pass through the scanner and off to the gate and if this were Christian Airways the agent would ask, “Have you loved your neighbor as yourself? Have you extended a hand to the fallen? Do you love the Lord with your whole heart?” and of course the answer is No, no, no, and so I’d be seated in 27B next to a talkative Scientologist and denied a screwdriver and not allowed Wi-Fi and my seat wouldn’t recline and I’d be given a crying infant to hold, but I fly Delta so no questions are asked.
I am a privileged white male. I acquired a vocation in eighth grade when my teacher Mr. Anderson showed me a story by A.J. Liebling and I decided I wanted to Lieble. I attended college when tuition was $360 for the school year and now Medicare has paid a bundle to replace my mitral valve and if it hadn’t been done, I’d be dead and not gallivanting around the country doing shows as an octogenarian stand-up as I did last week in California.
My audiences skew older than Taylor Swift’s (and also they’re smaller) but in California for some reason I drew a lot of millennials, which is a tougher crowd. They don’t want to hear jokes about aging. To them, it’s a catastrophe waiting to happen. Part of my show is an a cappella sing-along, which old people find very moving, to stand and sing “How Great Thou Art” into “Kumbaya” into “Brown-Eyed Girl” into “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” but the millennials don’t want to sing. It strikes them as juvenile. Plus which, they don’t know the words. Millennials have been flooded with data all their lives, there are gigabyte marks on their foreheads, as a result of which they have no memory. I sing “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty” and they look at me blankly: what is this?
I want to give them a communal experience, standing shoulder to shoulder with strangers and feeling the fellowship based on mutual knowledge of “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” but they refuse. I get it. I used to want to be cool myself. Back in 1970 or so, I saw the Grateful Dead play at a hockey rink in Minnesota and they sang “Brokedown Palace” and I felt euphoric, one of the select, even though I wasn’t smoking, but the Dead are gone and I’m on my way out myself, and now I find myself feeling fellowship with Kentuckians and Indianans, doing shows in reddish cities, and hiking around the parking lot I see plenty of dreadful bumper stickers but during the sing-along it turns out they know “It Is Well With My Soul” and we sing it softly in dim light, four-part harmony, a thousand of us, and I’m sure the baritones include men of authoritarian bent, but still peace is flowing like a river, and we feel transported by it, the unity of souls, at least in this moment. For me, a transformational moment, to be united with people I keenly disagree with, who are pledged to the Orange Lunabomber.
But I cherish those harmonious moments. I had a beautiful crowd in Tennessee who knew the Battle Hymn, even the verse about the circling camps and dews and damps and flaring lamps. I love those people. It’s a privilege to know them. I could’ve become a valet parker and instead I wound up befriending strangers, some of whom would deplore me if they knew me better. What a good life. I have no complaints. I was good and unhappy when I was young but I’m over it. And I do believe that the truth is marching on.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2023 “In a world full of noise, we are no longer accustomed to silence; indeed sometimes we struggle with it, because silence forces us to face God and ourselves. Yet it lies at the foundation of the word and of life.” Pope Francis
I know the hairs on your head. And I love you as my child. Will love you unconditionally ’til infinity I will forgive you and pay for you with the Resurrection of my Son, Jesus Christ. Forgiveness is yours.
“Seven, in the Bible, is a number that indicates completeness, and so Peter is very generous in the assumptions of his question. But Jesus goes further, and answers him: “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven”. He tells him, that is, that when one forgives, one does not calculate; that it is good to forgive everything, and always!.” Pope Francis Sept 17, 23
“First, God is He who goes out at all hours to call us. The parable says that the master “went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard”, but then continues to go out at various times of the day until sunset, to look for those whom no one had yet taken to work. We thus understand that in the parable the workers are not only men, but above all God, who goes out all day without tiring.”
“So many criticize and say that everything is going wrong. But that’s not what the Christian is called to do; instead, he is called to deal with it, to get his or her hands dirty: first of all, as St. Paul told us, to pray, and then not to engage in idle chattering – idle chatter is a plague – but to promote good, and to build peace and justice in truth. This, too, is apostolic zeal; it is the proclamation of the Gospel; and this is Christian beatitude: ‘blessed are the peacemakers’.” Pope Francis
It’s the birthday of John Coltrane, born in Hamlet, North Carolina (1926). When asked to describe his style, he said, “I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.” He played with Johnny Hodges, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis before forming his own quartet in 1961.
The Vibrant Channeled Creator 