apparently random things from my notes

Prisma - from a photo

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The French writer, Saint-Exupery, in his book, The Little Prince, catches the beauty of friendship in the form of a fable. 

The Little Prince meets the Little Fox. They sit down but keep distance carefully. The Little Fox suggests that they be friends. The boy answers, “We are different; I am afraid, you are afraid…”  The fox answers, “You look at me askance, very slowly, and we be very quiet. Then after a long time you come next to me and talk to me, very softly, and then we are friends…”

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St. Paul in one of his epistles says that we must make haste to live because time is deceptive. We live all the days of our life as though we were writing hastily, carelessly, a draft of life that one day we will copy in fair hand. It is as though we are just preparing to build, collecting all that will later be organized into beauty, harmony, and meaning…. But years pass and we never do it.

This is not only because death comes, but because  at every period of life we become unable to do what the previous period would have allowed us to do. It is not in our mature years that we can achieve a beautiful and meaningful youth, as it is not in old age that we can reveal to God and to the world what we might have been in our years of maturity. 

There is a time for all things, but once the time has gone, these things can no longer be done.

Victor Hugo said that there is fire in the eyes of the young, but there should be light in the eyes of the old. The time of the glowing fire passes, the time of light reaches us, but when the time of being a light has come, we can no longer do those things that can be done only in the days of our flaming. 
Time is deceptive. 
When we are told that we must remember death, it is not in order to give us a fear of life; it is in order to make us live with all the intensity that we could possibly have if we were aware that every moment is the only moment we possess…. 

And so the remembrance of death seems to be the only power that makes life ultimately intense.

–Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, From Living Orthodoxy in the Modern World
ht Gladsome Lights

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in·tense

inˈtens/

adjective

1. 1. 

   of extreme force, degree, or strength.

   "the job demands intense concentration"

   synonyms:

   extreme, great, acute, fierce, severe, high; More
2. 2. 

   having or showing strong feelings or opinions; extremely earnest or serious.

   "an intense young woman, passionate about her art"

   synonyms:

   passionate, impassioned, ardent, fervent, zealous, vehement, fiery, emotional;

yeah, I'm not intense. 

I saw the Bloom excerpt last August and saved it in my notes so that I could look at it often during the past year, also to share it here - today. To me the Bloom quote is an encouragement to live in the present.  To be current with one's life. That's one of the things I like about flying small planes, it's why I don't prefer to use autopilot.  In a small plane you always have things to do, minor adjustments to tweek, things to monitor ... right now stuff going on.  And you can make it ... lovely. 

This might be the best year ever, one day at a time ... a bunch of lovely biglittle days.

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Lamentations 3:22-23(ESV)

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;[a]
    his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;

            great is your faithfulness. 

(How marvelous to catch  the first  light of a new day.) 

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The future is something which everyone reaches at a rate of sixty minutes per hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." ~ C.S. Lewis

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