Fragments on Grace

When despair for the world grows in me,

I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world,

and am free.

                                           ~Wendell Berry

Within the past year two friends have independently asked me whether I can explain the religious concept of "grace." I've had to reply "not really." The best I've been able do is to assemble this collection of sentences containing the word "grace."

Fragments on Grace

Hope for the world's despair:
we feel the nations' pain;
can anything repair
this broken earth again?
For this we pray:
in every place
a spark of grace
to light the way.
               ~Ally Barret

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying "You are accepted."
               ~Paul Tillich

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.
               ~Frederick Buechner

I recognize the delivery of grace to my day, even if I cannot identify a specific return address.
               ~Mary Anne Radmacher

Grace is a power that comes in and transforms a moment into something better.
               ~Caroline Myss

You can have the other words—chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
               ~Mary Oliver

We are born broken. We live by mending. The grace of God is glue.
               ~Eugene O'Neill

Grace is bestowed on us, not because we have done good works, but that we may be able to do them.
               ~Saint Augustine

For me, every hour is grace.
               ~Elie Wiesel

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.
               ~Edward Everett Hale

The law works fear and wrath; grace works hope and mercy.
               ~Martin Luther

To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness.
               ~Eckhart Tolle

Knowing the odds against your unique birth,

the small chance your step would be directed

my way or that I would be selected

by you from all the women on earth,

aware of how often couples are pulled apart

by accidental sources of distress,

circumstances none before could guess

who celebrated their propitious start,

how can I set our table without awe?

We eat and do the dishes, one ritual

of many. Yet what seems to be habitual

is daily thrown by probability's law.

That by my side is your most likely place

remains for me what I know best of grace.

                ~Marian Willard Blackwell

Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to our efforts will flood the soul.
               ~Simone Weil

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
               ~Karl Barth

The wind of divine grace is always blowing. You just need to spread your sail. Whenever you do anything, do it with your whole heart concentrated on it. Think day and night, I am of the essence of that Supreme Being-Consciouosness-Bliss. What fear and anxiety have I?
               ~Swami Vivekananda

Sense of sin may be often great and more felt than grace; yet not be more than grace.
               ~Thomas Adams

Above all, live in the present moment and God will give you all the grace you need.
               ~Francois Fenelon

Sometimes our brains are our own worst enemy because grace isn't logical.
               ~Judah Smith

It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and grace of it elude the stranger.
               ~George Santayana

You cannot predict when grace takes place; you can only wait.
               ~Mata Amritanandamayi

Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces—and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.
               ~Mark Twain

It seems to me one cannot sit down in the Round Reading Room of the British Museum without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for my English birthright, freely to partake of these beautiful books, and speak the truth I find there.
               ~William Makepeace Thackeray

Grace is something you can never get but only be given.
               ~Frederick Buechner

You cannot beat the clock. My advice is to grab your moments of grace and enjoy them while they last.
               ~Amy Dickinson

Amid countless everyday miracles, I come in contact with something greater than myself and realize I am a part of it. I move in wonder through inspiration, reverence, gratitude,  interconnectedness, transcendence, and grace.
               ~John Paul Caponigro

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Gracious Light and Shadow

Awaiting an expected phone call on a recent afternoon, I lay back on the bed in my Study and was struck by this color-and-shadow pattern on the ceiling:

I've tried to understand the dynamics of this complex pattern. Here's what I think.

On the left, the main source of light is my Study window, transmitting relatively cool, blueish daylight.

On the right, the main source of light is a lamp on my desk, with a warmish bulb and a yellowish lampshade, resulting in an orangish hue.

On the vertical walls in the photo we can see the basic blue and orange.

Each of the light sources was casting a shadow of the fan onto the ceiling. A shadow is a darkening, and darkening intensifies color that is otherwise pale. Thus the shadows appeared bluer and oranger than their unshadowed backgrounds.

Orange light from the desk lamp was being blocked by the fan blades, and the resulting shadow was therefore a darkening of predominantly ambient blue light. Thus the darkened shadow looked blue.

Similarly, the blue light transmitted by the window was being blocked by the fan blades, and the resulting shadow was a darkening of predominantly ambient orange light. Thus the darkened shadow looked orange.

At three locations the blue and orange shadows crossed paths. These crossings are brown—the simple combination of blue + orange.

In my blog posting of April 6, I quoted Hans Küng: "This is grace: new chances in life." The color-and-shadow dynamics on my ceiling have been for me a form of grace: new delight in life.

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Music Notes

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If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. (Documented in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, ed. Alice Calaprice, p.237.)

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I get most joy in life out of my violin. (The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, p.237.)

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To know the cause why music was ordain'd!

Was it not to refresh the mind of man

After his studies or his usual pain? 

    (Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act III, Scene 1.)

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In sweet music is such art,

Killing care and grief of heart....

    (Shakespeare, King Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 1.)

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Mathematics is music for the mind;

Music is mathematics for the soul.

It is no accident that medieval scholars in organizing their curriculum placed music along with arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy in the quadrivium. (Donald E. Hall, Musical Acoustics, Brooks/Cole Publishing, p.444.)

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Music is universal, crosses cultural, historical, and intellectual boundaries, and is grounded in mathematics. Mathematics is also universal, crosses cultural, historical, and intellectual boundaries, and is reflected in music. The interconnectedness of math and music pulsates and sings with a rhythm and harmony of its own. (Trudi Hammel Garland and Charity Vaughan Kahn, eds., Math and Music: Harmonious Connections, p.5.)

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Mozart is universal. One marvels again and again how everything comes to expression in him: heaven and earth, nature and man, comedy and tragedy, passion in all its forms and the most profound inner peace, the Virgin Mary and the demons, the church mass, the curious solemnity of the Freemasons and the dance hall, ignorant and sophisticated people, cowards and heroes (genuine or bogus), the faithful and the faithless, aristocrats and peasants, Papageno and Sarastro. And he seems to concern himself with each of these in turn not only partially but fully; rain and sunshine fall on all. This is reflected, I think, in the utterly lovely but always, it seems, effortless and inevitable way in which he shapes and arranges the relationship among human voices, or in the concertos between the reigning solo instrument and the accompanying strings and wind instruments—which never merely accompany. Can one ever listen enough to what happens in a Mozart orchestra, how the components are introduced, unexpected but always with perfect timing in their own height or depth and tone color? It is as though in a small segment the whole universe bursts into song because evidently the man Mozart has apprehended the cosmos and now, functioning only as a medium, brings it into song! (Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Eerdmans Publishing, pp.34–5.)

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Mozart's music is not, in contrast to that of Bach, a message, and not, in contrast to that of Beethoven, a personal confession. He does not reveal in his music any doctrine and certainly not himself.... Mozart does not wish to say anything: he just sings and sounds. (Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, p.37.)

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Of Mozart's more than sixty pieces of church music, one need think only of the C Minor Mass, the Credo Mass or the Coronation Mass, and also of the Ave verum corpus from the end of his life, which in the intense expressiveness of its melody and chromatic harmony can show how music itself can be worship. (Hans Küng, Mozart: Traces of Transcendence, Eerdmans Publishing, p.31.)

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The mysteries of Ave verum corpus are embodied in subtle gestures.... Mozart stages the great Christian mystery of corporeal pain and spiritual redemption as a ravishing, yet quietly personal, revelation. Within the world of Ave verum corpus, the word of God is a whisper in your ear, a rustle in your blood, a breath. (Scott Burnham, Mozart's Grace, Princeton University Press, p.75.)

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Whoever has discovered Mozart even to a small degree and then tries to speak about him falls quickly into what seems rapturous stammering. (Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, p.27.)

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Claudio Abbado, conductor, to a young pianist preparing Mozart: "Keep it simple; don't make it beautiful." "But it is beautiful." "Yes: that's my point." (Documentation unknown.)

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Here [at the Opera] it was that Emmy found her delight, and was introduced for the first time to the wonders of Mozart and Cimarosa. The Major's musical taste has been before alluded to, and his performances on the flute commended. But perhaps the chief pleasure he had in the operas was in watching Emmy's rapture while listening to them. A new world of love and beauty broke upon her when she was introduced to those divine compositions: this lady had the keenest and finest sensibility, and how could she be indifferent when she heard Mozart? The tender parts of Don Juan awakened in her raptures so exquisite that she would ask herself when she went to say her prayers of a night, whether it was not wicked to feel so much delight? But the Major, whom she consulted upon this head, as her theological adviser (and who himself had a pious and reverent soul), said that, for his part, every beauty of art or nature made him thankful as well as happy; and that the pleasure to be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as for any other worldly blessing. (William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, chapter 61.)

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The ear changes with the generations, and what is cacophony to me may well draw tears down the cheeks of my nephews and nieces; so I will confine myself to affirming that poetry which renounces the singing quality plucks its own wings. (Sir Edward Marsh, quoted in Musical America, January, 1991).

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Music is the art most nigh to tears and memory. (Attributed to Oscar Wilde.)

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Certain strains of music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms. (George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Bk.5, Ch.1— the character Philip speaking.)

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I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music. At other times one is conscious of carrying a weight. (Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Bk.6, Ch.3 — the character Maggie speaking.)

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There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music. (Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Bk.6, Ch.7, the author's observation.)

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But Maggie, who had little more power of concealing the impressions made upon her than if she had been constructed of musical strings, felt her eyes getting larger with tears. (Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Bk.6, Ch.7.)

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There is nothing in the world more like prayer than music. (Source unknown.)

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Unto Thy word so tunèd let me be,
That in each part I may thereto agree.
They sing and play the songs which best Though lov'st,
Who do and say the things which Thou approv'st.

Teach me the strain that calmeth minds enraged,
And which from vain affections doth recall.
So to the choir where angels music make
I may aspire when I this life forsake.

    (Poem attributed to William Austin, 1587–1634.)

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                                      ...May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

    (George Eliot, "O May I Join the Choir Invisible")

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O God, whose voice is as the sound of many waters,
thou hast bidden us to worship thee with the sound of the trumpet,
with psaltery and harp, with stringed instruments and organs,
and to be glad in thee and to shout for joy:
Help us to contrive by all means to set forth thy most worthy praise,
that our art may be tuned to thy glory.

    (John Robert Walmsley Stott, alt., documentation unknown.)

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A painter paints pictures on canvas. Musicians paint their pictures on silence. (Leopold Stokowski, documentation unknown.)

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After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. (Aldous Huxley, "The Rest Is Silence," in Music at Night and Other Essays.)

Music’s ability to express the inexpressible was recognized by the greatest of all verbal artists. The man who wrote Othello and The Winter’s Tale was capable of uttering in words whatever words can possibly be made to signify. And yet...whenever something in the nature of a mystical emotion or intuition had to be communicated, Shakespeare regularly called upon music to help him to "put it across." (Ibid.)

When the inexpressible had to be expressed, Shakespeare laid down his pen and called for music. And if the music should also fail? Well, there was always silence to fall back on. For always, always and everywhere, the rest is silence. (Ibid.)

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Who hears music, feels solitude peopled at once. (Robert Browning, "A Transcript from Euripides.")

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When we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present. (Alan Watts, documentation unknown.)

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No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them. (Alan Watts, documentation unknown.)

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From Einstein's dedication of the Wall of Fame at the 1938–39 World's Fair in New York: "To the Negro and his wonderful songs and choirs we are indebted for the finest contribution in the realm of art which America has so far given the world." (The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, pp.311–12.)

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In 1926 Einstein was invited to participate in the First International Congress for Sexual Research, to play one of the violin parts in a Brahms String Sextet. His answer: "Unfortunately I don't feel I'm in a position, on the strength of either my sexual or musical abilities, to accept your kind invitation." (The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, p.236.)

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Even if one loves to play
One's little fiddle night and day
It's not right to broadcast it
Lest the list'ners scoff at it.
If you scratch with all your might—
Which is certainly your right—
Then bring down the windowpane
So the neighbors don't complain.

    (A verse composed by Einstein and sent to his friend, the mathematician Emil Hilb, 1939; translated by Alice Calaprice, Ultimate Quotable Einstein, 466.)

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"Violins"

The violins have been gregarious
Right from the time of Stradivarius
And in the worst orchestral weather
They like to string along together
Producing tones, both high and deep,
From hair of horse on gut of sheep.
And yet to play the violin
One has to take it on the chin;
But violinists take a chance
Because they know it brings romance.
With shaking head and swaying hip
Thus handily the gypsies gyp—
Thus easily the fiddlers can
Bring life and love to any man—
And so we see, from this tirade,
Why Rome burned up when Nero played.

    (Laurence McKinney, People of Note, Crowell-Collier Publishing, 1940.)

Einstein can't be blamed for this one!

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A rare recording of Einstein playing his violin—the 2nd movement of Mozart's Sonata in B-flat major KV378—is at  https://bit.ly/3wQ1hOJ .

 

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Sayings of Mirth and Meaning and Maybe Both

 

Steeple and Paraglider

Lake Bohini, Slovenia

Since college days I have collected sayings that I find edifying and entertaining. My file contains scores of cards, dashed off with no concern for careful documentation and no thought of ever sharing—till now. As a result, the fifty sayings that I share here are often loosely documented or undocumented. I offer my thanks and, where necessary, my apologies to the originators.

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Vital religion is like good music: it needs no defense, only rendition. A wrangling controversy in support of religion is as if the members of an orchestra should beat folks over the head with their violins to prove that the music is beautiful. Play the music! (Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick) 

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Church marquee: "Tithe. Anyone can honk." 

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A prig is a person whose opinions we always know, though we never ask.

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It is the part of wisdom not to bewail nor to deride, but to understand. (Benedict Spinoza, Ethics) 

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An Amish man is asked, "Are you saved?" He responds, "I'm not the one to ask. Ask people who know me." 

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Peace is not an end to differences; it is a way of dealing with differences. (Roger Fisher, Harvard Magazine, March-April 2004) 

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Confusion we can clear up. Mystery we cannot. Be clear, and revere mystery. (Scott Russell Sanders) 

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The best things in life are not things. 

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Don't believe everything you think. (Allan Lokos) 

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Our world neglects vastly too many people, leaving them to swallow their tears and live on the salt.

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Savoring the world and saving the world are profoundly connected. (E. B. White) 

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The Devil comes to a Legislator and says, "I can offer you unlimited special interest money, money impossible to trace; in return I ask for your soul and the souls of your children." The Legislator ponders for a moment and asks, "What's the catch?" 

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The only remedy for the irreversibility of history is forgiveness. (Hannah Arendt) 

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We must tangibilitate the Gospel. (Father Divine)

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To tell a lie is easy. To tell only one lie is difficult. 

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Reality is that which, when you don't believe in it, doesn't go away. (Peter Viereck) 

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This is grace: new chances in life. (Rev. Hans Küng, On Being a Christian) 

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What right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is but a deficiency of temptation. (William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair) 

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Seven Social Sins:

    Wealth without works

    Pleasure without conscience

    Knowledge without character

    Commerce without morality

    Science without humanity

    Worship without sacrifice

    Politics without principle

(From a sermon by Rev. Frederick Lewis Donaldson, Westminster Abbey, March 20, 1925; promulgated by Mahatma Gandhi.) 

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We must build that kind of society where it is easier for people to be good. (Peter Maurin, often quoted by Dorothy Day) 

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As far as I can tell, the only time Jesus wants people in the closet is when they are praying. (Rev. Dan Ivins, referring to Matthew 6:6) 

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A text out of context becomes a pretext. (Rev. Jesse Jackson) 

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The Church should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. (Adapted by Martin Marty from a saying about newspapers.) 

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Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but we must take it because conscience tells us it is right. (Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., speech at the Poor People's March in Washington DC, 1968)

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The trickle-down theory of economics is at variance with the prophetic message "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." (Amos 5:24) 

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Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. (George Santayana, Life of Reason) 

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Liberal democracy must be more than just the Market plus elections, (Václav Havel) 

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O God, Protect me from your followers. (Bumper sticker) 

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The problem with much Christian mission work is that it's all mouth and no ears. (Prof. Diana Eck) 

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Christian discipleship: a realistic, reverent, reconciling life of service. 

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I wonder if Muslims look at us and think, "You're going to have to look a lot more redeemed before I'll believe in your redeemer." (Rev. William Willimon)

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A raindrop plunged in greyness may not know 

when God bends light within to make a bow. (Marian Willard Blackwell)

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Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. (Teddy Roosevelt)

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We have to believe in free will. We have no choice. (Isaac Bashevis Singer) 

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A sense of mystery keeps strength gentle and certitude vulnerable. (John Dominic Crossan) 

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The problem with ideology: it does not represent or conform to or even address reality. It is a straight-edge ruler in a fractal universe. (Marilynne Robinson) 

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God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. (Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings) 

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Being a pacifist between wars is like being a vegetarian between meals. (Ammon Hennacy) 

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Deal kindly with us, O Lord, deal kindly,

for we have suffered insult enough;

for too long have we had to suffer the insults of the wealthy,

the scorn of proud men. (Psalm 123:4–5, The New English Bible)

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We are not punished for our sins, but by them. (Elbert Hubbard) 

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I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest—I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds and brings in the most people as sharers. It is surely better to pardon too much than to condemn too much. (George Eliot, Middlemarch) 

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Political activist and community organizer Virginia Walker Broughton was told by her husband "You need to stay home." She replied, "I've had a talk with God. God told me this is my calling. I have to do this. So you and God work this out." (Told by Prof. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in The Black Church, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) 

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We know that it is wrong to cheat, to steal, to lie; that people are precious in the sight of God and must always be treated as such; that manners matter; that kindness counts; that knowledge is superior to ignorance; and that the simplest courtesies are superior to the most sophisticated arguments. (Rev. Peter Gomes, welcoming service for new students, Harvard University Memorial Church) 

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A reporter asked Rev. Hoyt Blackwell, President of Mars Hill College, about rumors of friction among the faculty. He answered: "Yes, we have enough friction to give us traction." 

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We are of one heart but of two minds. (Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr. on discussions of homosexuality at New York's Riverside Church) 

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Several friends visited W. C. Fields at a sanatorium where he had gone after a bad binge. They were astounded to find him sitting up in bed reading the Bible. When they asked why he was reading that particular book, Fields replied: "Looking for loopholes." 

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Wisdom from the movies:

    "God loves you just as you are, and loves you too much to leave you that way." (Junebug) 

    "Sometimes we must just keep on living until we feel alive again." (Call the Midwife) 

    "Do your best each day, and see what tomorrow brings." (Riding the Bus with My Sister) 

    "Have courage and be kind." (Cinderella, 2015) 

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Wealth is not a sin, but it is a problem. (Rev. Peter Gomes, The New Yorker, 11/11/96) 

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Too often our Christian social ethics seems to extend little further than the maxim to leave the rented beach cottage as clean as we found it.

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What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

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