Now Thank We All Our God

A Hymn of Thanksgiving

Now thank we all our God,
... With heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done,
... In Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers' arms
... Has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
... And still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God
... Through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts
... And blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace,
... And guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills,
... In this world and the next!

All praise and thanks to God
... The Father now be given;
The Son and Him Who reigns
... With Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God,
... Whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now,
... And shall be evermore.

--Martin Rinkart c. 1636
(translation by Catherine Winkworth)

Heinberg summing up

Growth is dead.
Let's make the most of it.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

Burning Down the House

Watch out
You might get what you're after
Cool babies
Strange but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

Hold tight wait till the party's over
Hold tight we're in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burning down the house

Here's your ticket pack your bag: time for jumpin' overboard
The transportation is here
Close enough but not too far, maybe you know where you are
Fightin fire with fire

All wet
Hey you might need a raincoat
Shakedown
Dreams walking in broad daylight
Three hun-dred six-ty five de-grees
Burning down the house

It was once upon a place sometimes I listen to myself
Gonna come in first place
People on their way to work baby what did you expect
Gonna burst into flame

My house's out of the ordinary
That's right
Don't want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house

No visible means of support and you have not seen nuthin yet
Everything's stuck together
I don't know what you expect staring into the tv set
Fighting fire with fire

- Talking Heads

God in cast-off pieces

Look then at the faces and bodies of people you love.
The explicit beauty that comes not from smoothness of skin or neutrality of expression, but from the web of experience that has left its mark. Each face, each body is its own living fossilized, record. A record of cats, combatants, difficult births; of accidents, cruelties, blessings. Reminders of folly, greed, indiscretion, impatience. A moment of time, of memory, preserved, internalized, and enshrined within and upon the body.
You need not be told that these records are what render your beloved beautiful.
If God exists, He is there, in the small, cast-off pieces, rough and random and not two alike.

from Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos
(from a friend)

Thank you, Lord.

Noble

Terrible or not, difficult or not,
the only thing that is beautiful,
noble, religious and mystical is
to be happy.

- Arnaud Desjardin

Grand

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are moments when we touch one another.

- Jack Kornfield

The end of the story?

Where there is disappointment,
I don't know if it's the end of the story.
But it may be just the beginning of a great adventure.

- Prema Chodron