peace & love on planet earth

“I should be distressed that I drop off to sleep during my prayers and during my thanksgiving after Holy Communion. But I don’t feel at all distressed. I know that children are just as dear to their parents whether they are asleep or awake and I know that doctors put their patients to sleep before they operate. So I just think that God ‘knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.'”

“[My] conversion was not a conversion from unbelief to faith, but from a Christianity which had become oppressive to one which brought a glorious sense of freedom and joy. This freedom came when I accepted that I did not believe in God as traditionally understood. That was a kind of trigger which released me to find a new meaning in the word God. Only when I had accepted that ‘I do not believe in God’ (my old God) was I free to discover how with integrity I could still say ‘I believe in God’ (understood in a new way).”

So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.

“It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them or to improve them; it is only necessary to live among them, sharing the human condition and being present to them in love.”