Goodbye Is Too Good a Word

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together:
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, "Don't hope
On this side of the grave."
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

--Seamus Heaney

The Cure at Troy

The Official Theme Song of the George W. Bush Presidency

The Final George W. Bush Press Conference

A clueless, pathetic fucking embarassment, to the last.

LDS Relief Society: Creatively Bankrupt?

Sometime during the Christmas season, a hand towel and a candy cane appeared on my doorstep, accompanied by the following letter. Either the Relief Society is rapidly running out of ideas, or the members have all suddenly become rampant fans of Douglas Adams:

The Towel

At first glance, one looks at a kitchen towel and thinks, "Wow, a towel. . . I needed a new one," or, "Wow, a towel, the old ones are getting stained and worn." But, have we ever stopped to think that for years, even thousands of years, the towel has not just been used in the kitchen, but for a variety of reasons?

Take for example: the mother who wipes the tears off a little child to sooth the physical and emotional hurt; the physician who binds the wounds of a bleeding patient; a woman in her home wiping her hands as she moves from task to task; the weary traveler who wipes his sweated brow; the manager of a boxer who "throws in the towel" to save the life of his protege; or the young man wiping the grease off his hands as he fixed the old jalopy.

Not withstanding all the above examples, perhaps the most significant use of the towel was about two thousand years ago when our loving brother took an ordinary towel in his hands and dried the feet of his disciples only hours before his crucifixion.

Sure, the towel is a handy item with a myriad of uses; but it also had a deep symbolic meaning when seen in the hands of the Savior doing a work of kindness for his fellow men.

So, take this towel, knowing it is given with love, and do works of goodness with it, as the Savior worked goodness with his, so many years ago.

With love,

The *********** Ward Relief Society Presidency

Really? A towel?

All in all, I think I'd rather receive another copy of the Book of Mormon.