When I’m struggling to stay inspired, I return to a certain handful of authors again and again. Over the next few weeks, I want to share a few favorite quotes from some of those reliable old guides.
Today, let’s start with a guy who probably wouldn’t expect to be quoted in a newsletter about justice, but who belongs here nonetheless: Brian Doyle.
When the world seems flat, and my head is too fogged up to write another paragraph or plan another class, or I’ve lost track of what I’m hoping for or how to possibly take the next tiny step toward Significance, I often turn to Brian Doyle.
His books (my favorites are One Long River of Song and A Book of Uncommon Prayer) are packed with juicy little descriptions of mundane delights—suntan lotion, decent shoes, muddy paw prints, spatulas, opossums. Every word simultaneously points to the most profound things—familial love, meeting death, the beauty in “poor ugly disdained creatures” (among those, opossums). Brian Doyle has a way of refocusing our souls like the lenses in binoculars, zooming in on breathtaking images of truth.
Here’s a snippet from one of his “uncommon prayers” titled “Furious Prayer for the Church I Love and Have Always Loved but Which Drives Me Insane with Its Fussy Fidgety Prim Tin-Eared Thirst for Control and Rules and Power and Money Rather Than the One Simple Thing the Founder Insisted On.”
Love—Lord help us, could we not have been assigned something easier, like astrophysics or quantum mechanics? But no—love those you cannot love. … The Rabbi did not say build churches, or retreat houses, or secure a fleet of cars for general use, or convene conferences, or issue position papers. He was pretty blunt about the hungry and the naked and the sick. He was not reasonable; we forget this. The Church is not a reasonable idea. The Church should be a verb. When it is only a noun it is not what the Founder asked of us. (p. 17-18)
And at the risk of including so much I violate copyright, let me also share one more. This one comes from a “Desperate Prayer for Patience with Politicians with Excellent Suits and Shoes and Meticulous Hair and Gobs of Television Makeup Who Have Utterly Forgotten That Their Jobs Are Finally About Feeding and Clothing and Protecting and Schooling Children.”
They are driving me stark muttering bubbling insane. They are nattering and preening. … They send children to war though they have never been to war and do not know the savagery of what they are sending children to do. They abuse their power and sneer at the poor and condescend to the elderly and lie about their motivations and their biographies. … Dear sweet Lord, give me the patience to be reasonable and call them calmly to account. Give them the startle of guilt and the ripple of shame. Make sore their consciences and shiver their arrogance so that they may puncture it themselves and so begin to achieve humility and be of actual honest genuine service to the least among us. This we pray, trying not to snarl overmuch. And so: amen. (p. 13-14)
Sick burn. What a word for an election year, eh?
I hope you’ll look up his books. You won’t regret it.
Stay tuned for more of my favorite quotes next time.