Love (III)

BY GEORGE HERBERT

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

               Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack

               From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

               If I lack'd any thing.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";

               Love said, "You shall be he."

"I, the unkind, ungrateful? ah my dear,

               I cannot look on thee."

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

               "Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame

               Go where it doth deserve."

"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"

               "My dear, then I will serve."

"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."

               So I did sit and eat.

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I just finished Tim Keller's The Meaning of Marriage (which rocked) and he mentioned this poem in the book.  

New Goal in Life: to go to the Jardin Des Tuileries in Paris

...It's where all the photos of the fashionable people with the white chalky powder on their shoes come from.

(the sartorialist)

God Knows by Minnie Louise Haskins

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.

God knows. His will Is best. 
The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.

And the government has given me a number to simplify my birth and life and death
And still my woman thinks I'm awful important
Like moon and sun and sea and sky and breath

this song is so beautiful. i must see her live.

The Paradox of Thrift

I'm a huge fan of NPR's Planet Money and today I was learning about John Maynard Keynes (who, according to Nicholas Wapshott, the author of Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics, was the most colorful Brit of the 20th Century besides Winston Churchill).  Keynes had a theory that was called The Paradox of Thrift: (according to wikipedia) "The paradox states that if everyone tries to save more money during times of recession, then aggregate demand will fall and will in turn lower total savings in the population because of the decrease in consumption and economic growth. The paradox is, narrowly speaking, that total savings may fall even when individual savings attempt to rise, and, broadly speaking, that increases in savings may be harmful to an economy"


In other words, if we all save our money, we all get poorer.  Fascinating.  I wonder what economic theory would have everyone being wise with their money and having good character?

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her 

cards as carefully as if she were plain.

F. Scott Fitzgerald 

(from: Musings in Femininity)