Our News
I was looking for a quote for something else and came across the text below. Somehow it helps me face my feelings, and frustrations kinda like turning towards the wind instead of sailing away, its also the reason why everyone should have a blog...
"When the evening news comes on, hundreds of thousands of people all over the earth are watching it on their TV screens or listening to it on their radios. Disasters and scandals, scientific breakthroughs and crimes of passion, the Cold War and all the smaller hot wars, negotiations that fail and others that succeed, the perpetual search for peace–people sit there by the millions half dazed by the things that go to create each particular day. Maybe they even try to make some kind of sense of it or, if they're not up to that, at least try to come to some sort of terms with it, try to figure out how it's apt to affect them for good or ill.
There is also, of course, the news that rarely if ever gets into the media at all, and that is the news of each particular day of each particular one of us. That is the news we're so busy making that we seldom get around to sitting down and thinking it over. If it takes some extraordinary turn we might, but the unextraordinary, commonplace events of each day as they come along we tend to let slip by almost unnoticed. That is, to put it mildly, a pity. What we are letting slip by almost unnoticed are the only lives on this planet we're presumably ever going to get.
We're all of us caught up in our own small wars, both hot and cold. We have our crimes and passions, our failures and successes. We make our occasional breakthroughs. God knows we are searching for peace. It's all apt to happen so quietly and on so small a scale we hardly realise it's happening. Only an unanswered letter. A phone conversation. A tone of voice. A chance meeting at the post office. An unexpected lump in the throat. Laughing till we cry. But these things are what it's all about. These things are what we are all about.
Maybe there's nothing on earth more important for us to do than sit down every evening or so and think it over, try to figure it out if we can, at least try to come to terms with it. The news of OUR day. Where it is taking us. Where it is taking the people we love. It is, if nothing else, a way of saying our prayers."
Frederick Buechner, 'Whistling in the Dark'
Freddy is my hero. (ps. can't get rid of the stupid italics)
"When the evening news comes on, hundreds of thousands of people all over the earth are watching it on their TV screens or listening to it on their radios. Disasters and scandals, scientific breakthroughs and crimes of passion, the Cold War and all the smaller hot wars, negotiations that fail and others that succeed, the perpetual search for peace–people sit there by the millions half dazed by the things that go to create each particular day. Maybe they even try to make some kind of sense of it or, if they're not up to that, at least try to come to some sort of terms with it, try to figure out how it's apt to affect them for good or ill.
There is also, of course, the news that rarely if ever gets into the media at all, and that is the news of each particular day of each particular one of us. That is the news we're so busy making that we seldom get around to sitting down and thinking it over. If it takes some extraordinary turn we might, but the unextraordinary, commonplace events of each day as they come along we tend to let slip by almost unnoticed. That is, to put it mildly, a pity. What we are letting slip by almost unnoticed are the only lives on this planet we're presumably ever going to get.
We're all of us caught up in our own small wars, both hot and cold. We have our crimes and passions, our failures and successes. We make our occasional breakthroughs. God knows we are searching for peace. It's all apt to happen so quietly and on so small a scale we hardly realise it's happening. Only an unanswered letter. A phone conversation. A tone of voice. A chance meeting at the post office. An unexpected lump in the throat. Laughing till we cry. But these things are what it's all about. These things are what we are all about.
Maybe there's nothing on earth more important for us to do than sit down every evening or so and think it over, try to figure it out if we can, at least try to come to terms with it. The news of OUR day. Where it is taking us. Where it is taking the people we love. It is, if nothing else, a way of saying our prayers."
Frederick Buechner, 'Whistling in the Dark'
Freddy is my hero. (ps. can't get rid of the stupid italics)
2 comments:
What a great quote. I believe one of the primary plagues in my life personally and also in our generation is the busy-ness we are consumed by. Silence and reflection are the lost gems which are now just echoes of a time and place now foreign to my own. A "pity" indeed. By the way, the italics added emphasis... very effective!
so much to contemplate every day and learn from. it is often difficult to make the time to examine that which has happpened in the course of a day, but how will we learn if we don't study the successes and failures of each day. i'm getting closer and closer to reading some of freddy's work.. thanks for sharing him with us.
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