Life (or God or maybe Satan)

has dealt me some disappointing blows. Some I have overcome with grace and dignity, Some I have yet to fully overcome, and still some have only just hit with a sickening thud.

well, shit.

Aside: You, boys in the desert, I commend you for the incredibly gracious spirit with which you are meeting your disappointments. I cannot seem to do so quite yet.

Here are some wise words from Wendell that are giving me a bit of consolation:



The Sycamore


In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut into it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.


Amen. Shalom.