REFLECTIONS

"The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else. A kind of refutation of the conservation of matter." -John Updike

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

William J. H. Boetcker (1873 – 1962)

Reading # 662 from *Singing the Living
Tradition*:

"STRANGE AND FOOLISH WALLS"

The years of all of us are short, our lives precarious.

*Our days and nights go hurrying on and there is scarcely time to do the
little that we might.*

Yet we find time for bitterness, for petty treason and evasion.

* What can we do to stretch our hearts enough to lose their littleness!*

Here we are -- all of us-- all upon this planet, bound together in a common
destiny,

* Living our lives between the briefness of the daylight and the dark.*

Kindred in this, each lighted by the same precarious, flickering flame of
life, how does it happen that we are not kindred in all things else?

*How strange and foolish are the walls of separation that divide us!*

A. Powell Davies

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”
-- Cicero 106 - 43 BC

Humes Dialogues -12-p.84

"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of honesty
and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most pompous views, suggested by theological theories and systems."
-Philo

Ludwig Büchner:
Force and Matter--Empirico-Philosophical Studies Intelligibly Rendered, 1855

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1855buchner.html

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This is one of the most successful, and early, statements on Materialism stemming from the conclusions of the New Science.

Force and Matter

No force without matter---no matter without force! Neither can be thought of per se; separated, they become empty abstractions. Imagine matter without force, and the minute particles of which a body consists, without that system of mutual attraction and repulsion which holds them together and gives form and shape to the body; imagine the molecular forces of cohesion and affinity removed, what then would be the consequence? The matter must instantly break up into a shapeless nothing. We know in the physical world of no instance of any particle of matter which is not endowed with forces, by means of which it plays its appointed part in some form or another, sometimes in connection with similar or with dissimilar particles. Nor are we in imagination capable of forming a conception of matter without force. . . . Force without matter is equally an idle notion. It being a law admitting of no exception that force can only be manifested in matter, it follows that force can as little possess a separate existence as matter without force....

“It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.”
- H.L. Mencken

We Give Thanks for Being
We Give Thanks for Being Here
We Give Thanks for Being Here Together

(optional Amen)

attributed to John Buehrens and to others



You, and all your associates, will probably find this worthy, and you and they will very likely miss something truly offensive in what some others call "prayer". So, take the challenge, lead the prayer,
and guess what, it's both short, and very easy to memorize.



--John Keohane

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau