Quotes

During Blaze's morning announcements, the school counselor read an inspirational quote: 

"If you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on." --Thomas Jefferson

I don't know who actually said this, but it sure as heck wasn't Jefferson. (Francisco tells me that Mike Johnson also misquoted poor Thomas Jefferson lately.) But also: Who thought that this quote would be comprehensible to kindergarteners?!

I'm reading Josef Pieper for the first time:

"Leisure is only possible when a man is at one with himself, when he acquiesces in his own being, whereas the essence of acedia is the refusal to acquiesce in one's own being. Idleness and the incapacity for leisure correspond with one another. Leisure is the contrary of both." 

"The strongest affirmation of this agreement is the celebration of a feast, where 'to celebrate' as Karl Kerenyi says, is 'the union of peace, contemplation, and intensity of life.' In all religions, the meaning of a feast has always been the same, the affirmation of man's fundamental accord with the world." 

"It is true that ever since the French Revolution attempts have repeatedly been made to manufacture feast-days and holidays that have no connection with divine worship, or are sometimes even opposed to it." 

I am loving this essay.