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a thought for the day

“Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why? I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France. Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star while we are alive anymore than we can take the train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis, and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means. To die quietly of old age, would be to go there on foot.” – Vincent Van Gogh (as researched by Australian director Paul Cox)

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9/11

I want to write something specifically pertaining to 9/11 but I can’t, there’s too much to say about that day and all the days after. To choose one part of it is not possible for me. When I see pictures, read and listen to stories told about that day and all the days after about the victims, of children waiting for a parent, of spouses, family members, friends of victims not knowing what to do with the news they just heard, stories of the people who survived, stories of all the heroes who assisted, and then the hostility, and the healings, my thinking comes to an abrupt stop and tears well up. We all have our own way of handling what happened on that horrifying day. It’s as if the world lived through a war that was speeded up to take place in just one day, a war watched by many throughout the world with minds and eyes and ears and hearts not quite able to comprehend any of it because it was an act that went far, far beyond anything any of us could have ever imagined.

Today we can pray for the people who died on that day, and for the people whose body, or mind, or spirit wants to heal. And we can always pray for peace.