KING HENRY V
What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Saint Crispin's Day
In honor of this day and by courtesy of William Shakespeare:
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
A Morbid Sense of Language
I was racking my brain for something less weighty to discuss here when it occurred to me to question that turn of phrase. Why should the verbage that comes to mind draw from an English form of torture? (Even turn of phrase could have such connotations....) Why should I not rather say I was watering my brain or fertilizing the ol' grey cells or some more fruitful idiom?
Of course the obvious answer is that I inherit the language of my predecessors. But what language that is! For racking our brains is only the beginning of it....
If we want to hear someone's idea, we might say, Fire away!
If we find something hilarious, we could say, You're killing me!
Sometimes if someone has done something excellently, we say, You murdered it!
We even draw an arrow to indicate which direction to go.
If someone has a good argument, we say, You have a good point (in other words, no button on the end of your sword, so you could actually kill someone with it).
When someone looks good, we say said person looks sharp.
We execute a plan.
And those are only the ones off the top of my head (does that remind anyone else of scalping?)....
Of course the obvious answer is that I inherit the language of my predecessors. But what language that is! For racking our brains is only the beginning of it....
If we want to hear someone's idea, we might say, Fire away!
If we find something hilarious, we could say, You're killing me!
Sometimes if someone has done something excellently, we say, You murdered it!
We even draw an arrow to indicate which direction to go.
If someone has a good argument, we say, You have a good point (in other words, no button on the end of your sword, so you could actually kill someone with it).
When someone looks good, we say said person looks sharp.
We execute a plan.
And those are only the ones off the top of my head (does that remind anyone else of scalping?)....
Saturday, October 15, 2016
The Eyes of a Young Child
The other day while visiting some dear friends of mine, I found myself the subject of an intensely-interested stare from their little one. That stare intrigued me at first for no other reason than the fact that I could hardly imagine blinking so few times without my eyes becoming dehydrated.
In order to illustrate my point, I offer you a picture of a young child staring:
What innocent joy, eh? Also, now you and I have the same image in our heads for the point I wish to make.
For later, as I reflected upon a baby's stare from another angle, I began to compare its selflessness to my own self-consciousness. A young child has no difficulty staring you right in the eyes for long periods of time, but it makes me uncomfortable.
At times, I find myself wordless in the company of friends or strangers. I have a longing desire to connect deeply, but I cannot find the path. Feeling my own inadequacy, I therefore find myself shying away from meeting the other's eyes, as if I should find therein the same condemnation I find in my own heart.
Yet what if we could truly become like little children? I wonder if we could then find the courage to stare in appreciation of the other's worth and unique beauty, forgetting ourselves....
In order to illustrate my point, I offer you a picture of a young child staring:
What innocent joy, eh? Also, now you and I have the same image in our heads for the point I wish to make.
For later, as I reflected upon a baby's stare from another angle, I began to compare its selflessness to my own self-consciousness. A young child has no difficulty staring you right in the eyes for long periods of time, but it makes me uncomfortable.
At times, I find myself wordless in the company of friends or strangers. I have a longing desire to connect deeply, but I cannot find the path. Feeling my own inadequacy, I therefore find myself shying away from meeting the other's eyes, as if I should find therein the same condemnation I find in my own heart.
Yet what if we could truly become like little children? I wonder if we could then find the courage to stare in appreciation of the other's worth and unique beauty, forgetting ourselves....
Monday, October 10, 2016
Suffering and Surrender
"Don't waste your suffering."
-Giovanni Paolo II
Suffering is an idea I mentioned in a post quite a while ago and it is a subject that continues to haunt my mind. It seems to be an essential part of our lives despite any hedonistic desires to remove it entirely.
It is interesting to me how many things have been created to alleviate suffering and yet these very inventions turn back upon us in some way, creating another form of suffering. We try to escape, but never can. No matter how many doctors and medicines we have, we still lose our health. Although we surround ourselves with friends, at least on social media, we are still lonely. Despite believing that we have advanced far beyond nations of previous centuries, we still cannot solve the daily problems that face us.
As I return to these words I wrote some time ago, I cannot recall precisely the direction I intended to go, but that is no matter. There are many paths I might follow and one lies clearly open before me...
I still grapple with this idea of suffering—with the fear of the Cross—but I am beginning to understand its fruit. In many ways, this last year and more has been a time of loss—the loss of things and people very dear to me. Yet at the same time there have been so many good things that I feel buoyed up to face these losses, and through the inner growth of the seed of faith within, I find little nubs of fruit beginning to form.
So many times I have sought to handle loneliness (as an example of suffering) by fleeing it or filling that emptiness with goods of varying sorts. Yet the void remains. There is nothing that can fill that void fully in this life and that aches. It feels wrong.
My reading lately has been reminding me, however, that we were in a sense created so—created with a vastness capable of embracing only the Infinite—and that we do not need to flee that pain nor cover it up. In the end those efforts are only like trying to use bandaids to staunch the blood from a cut-off limb anyway. They are at least as futile as that analogy...
Yet what if we simply accepted the pain? There is a way to turn yourself upside-down: to turn your whole world upside-down.
As an artist, I find that the pain often impels me to create. When I miss my Nonna or hate my inability to deal with people as perfectly as I expect, I find myself driven to weave words into poetry. When this world fails to live up to my expectations, I want to create theatre to move people's hearts.
Joy can provide a similar drive, but somehow it is less communicable. It does not impel creation in the same way.
This experience of pain does not hold true only for myself. Those writers I love—Dostoevsky for example—write out of suffering and thus touch the depths of the human condition. Where I experience beauty in art and literature, where these speak to my soul, one can find the source in some sort of suffering. We know that truth even when we cannot bear pain in our own lives.
There is left only one thing to do.
When faced with the vastness of the sea, we marvel. We see there the amazing power of something beyond ourselves and we are moved by the beauty. When we gaze at the inner sea that laps against the sands of our self-wrought shores, we might do the same. We might throw out our arms and laugh with joy in the face of the winds that come.
Surrender gives us that power.
Rather than flee the suffering or hide the pain, we can embrace it and surrender to its higher purpose. We can realize that we are not god unto ourselves, that we cannot control the winds that blow against our seas. We can know our place before the starry universe.
That realization has lead some to despair. Those who cannot surrender to a power beyond themselves must despair when they lose their grip on the shifting sands on which they built their homes. Yet what freedom there is in surrender! I taste more and more of that true and glorious freedom as I take each step along this path of surrender. And as I step farther, I begin to see the weaving of threads together into a great rope that pulls me ever higher.
Verso l'alto!
-Giovanni Paolo II
Suffering is an idea I mentioned in a post quite a while ago and it is a subject that continues to haunt my mind. It seems to be an essential part of our lives despite any hedonistic desires to remove it entirely.
It is interesting to me how many things have been created to alleviate suffering and yet these very inventions turn back upon us in some way, creating another form of suffering. We try to escape, but never can. No matter how many doctors and medicines we have, we still lose our health. Although we surround ourselves with friends, at least on social media, we are still lonely. Despite believing that we have advanced far beyond nations of previous centuries, we still cannot solve the daily problems that face us.
*
As I return to these words I wrote some time ago, I cannot recall precisely the direction I intended to go, but that is no matter. There are many paths I might follow and one lies clearly open before me...
*
I still grapple with this idea of suffering—with the fear of the Cross—but I am beginning to understand its fruit. In many ways, this last year and more has been a time of loss—the loss of things and people very dear to me. Yet at the same time there have been so many good things that I feel buoyed up to face these losses, and through the inner growth of the seed of faith within, I find little nubs of fruit beginning to form.
So many times I have sought to handle loneliness (as an example of suffering) by fleeing it or filling that emptiness with goods of varying sorts. Yet the void remains. There is nothing that can fill that void fully in this life and that aches. It feels wrong.
My reading lately has been reminding me, however, that we were in a sense created so—created with a vastness capable of embracing only the Infinite—and that we do not need to flee that pain nor cover it up. In the end those efforts are only like trying to use bandaids to staunch the blood from a cut-off limb anyway. They are at least as futile as that analogy...
Yet what if we simply accepted the pain? There is a way to turn yourself upside-down: to turn your whole world upside-down.
*
As an artist, I find that the pain often impels me to create. When I miss my Nonna or hate my inability to deal with people as perfectly as I expect, I find myself driven to weave words into poetry. When this world fails to live up to my expectations, I want to create theatre to move people's hearts.
Joy can provide a similar drive, but somehow it is less communicable. It does not impel creation in the same way.
This experience of pain does not hold true only for myself. Those writers I love—Dostoevsky for example—write out of suffering and thus touch the depths of the human condition. Where I experience beauty in art and literature, where these speak to my soul, one can find the source in some sort of suffering. We know that truth even when we cannot bear pain in our own lives.
There is left only one thing to do.
*
When faced with the vastness of the sea, we marvel. We see there the amazing power of something beyond ourselves and we are moved by the beauty. When we gaze at the inner sea that laps against the sands of our self-wrought shores, we might do the same. We might throw out our arms and laugh with joy in the face of the winds that come.
Surrender gives us that power.
Rather than flee the suffering or hide the pain, we can embrace it and surrender to its higher purpose. We can realize that we are not god unto ourselves, that we cannot control the winds that blow against our seas. We can know our place before the starry universe.
That realization has lead some to despair. Those who cannot surrender to a power beyond themselves must despair when they lose their grip on the shifting sands on which they built their homes. Yet what freedom there is in surrender! I taste more and more of that true and glorious freedom as I take each step along this path of surrender. And as I step farther, I begin to see the weaving of threads together into a great rope that pulls me ever higher.
Verso l'alto!
Monday, October 3, 2016
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, or Not
As a sort of social experiment, I want to see whether the mere mention of politically-charged names like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will garner more views to this post. I rather fancy it will. Furthermore, I suspect that despite how many people repeatedly assert that they are sick and tired of hearing about all of this political nonsense, most still flock to the names like moths to a candle.
I also have a point to make. (I am so full of points, in fact, that I shall have to struggle not to become porcupinical, which is a splendid new word I intend to use frequently.) Let us begin with a quotation from that illustrious writer known for his paradoxical statements of pithy truth:
So many people spurn the Ten Commandments as difficult to live by. At least, however, one may know and repeat all of them unlike the ten thousands of laws we have in this country today—or is it millions by now? There is a certain comfort in knowing that there are only ten commands by which to organize one's life and that these can be summarized in two easy statements.
I have always been intrigued by the language of the Ten Commandments also. Someday I will research the original verbage to determine whether the comment I am about to make holds true. For the moment, however, I will rest content with my observation of grammar regarding the commandments people often deem as negative, phrased thus: Thou shalt not....
Now this phrasing has fallen out of use in standard English (a disappointing circumstance that I shall address at some future point), so if we were to translate it, we should have to say either Do not... (as you may expect) or else You will not.... Neither is fully accurate. For shalt not and will not have distinct grammatical use. According to grammar rules rarely heeded these days, in the second and third person (it is the opposite in the first person), will speaks simply of a future happening while shall implies determination, or, in other words, is a stronger way to say essentially the same thing.
In conclusion then, the wording of the Ten Commandments says not so much Don't do all these things but rather it is as if God were saying (in modern parlance), If you love Me, you will not do all these things. If you love, everything else follows as a matter of course.
So let us dare then to let ourselves be governed by the Ten Commandments so that we need not the ten thousand commandments dictated by our nation's rule. Let us, as Chesterton puts it so well:
I also have a point to make. (I am so full of points, in fact, that I shall have to struggle not to become porcupinical, which is a splendid new word I intend to use frequently.) Let us begin with a quotation from that illustrious writer known for his paradoxical statements of pithy truth:
“If men will not be governed by the
Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand
commandments.”
― G.K. Chesterton
So many people spurn the Ten Commandments as difficult to live by. At least, however, one may know and repeat all of them unlike the ten thousands of laws we have in this country today—or is it millions by now? There is a certain comfort in knowing that there are only ten commands by which to organize one's life and that these can be summarized in two easy statements.
I have always been intrigued by the language of the Ten Commandments also. Someday I will research the original verbage to determine whether the comment I am about to make holds true. For the moment, however, I will rest content with my observation of grammar regarding the commandments people often deem as negative, phrased thus: Thou shalt not....
Now this phrasing has fallen out of use in standard English (a disappointing circumstance that I shall address at some future point), so if we were to translate it, we should have to say either Do not... (as you may expect) or else You will not.... Neither is fully accurate. For shalt not and will not have distinct grammatical use. According to grammar rules rarely heeded these days, in the second and third person (it is the opposite in the first person), will speaks simply of a future happening while shall implies determination, or, in other words, is a stronger way to say essentially the same thing.
In conclusion then, the wording of the Ten Commandments says not so much Don't do all these things but rather it is as if God were saying (in modern parlance), If you love Me, you will not do all these things. If you love, everything else follows as a matter of course.
So let us dare then to let ourselves be governed by the Ten Commandments so that we need not the ten thousand commandments dictated by our nation's rule. Let us, as Chesterton puts it so well:
“Break the conventions. Keep
the commandments.”
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