Artist and blogger Pasadena Adjacent commented on yesterday's post:
"When I saw that first picture of the nuns I thought they were wearing hardhats. Now that took me by surprise."
Hardhats! This reminded me of a sermon a pastor friend preached a decade ago in Perryville, Arkansas. He quoted Annie Dillard, and so will I:
"On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982
.(See this post to understand where the motorcycle helmets in the photo are.)
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Goodness, Dina, you sure get around. You saw the pope! The setting is quite magnificent. What an experience.
ReplyDeleteYour quote from Dillard reminds me of another quote, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." Perhaps we still don't, eh?
'...we should all be wearing crash helmets!'--- ain't that the truth :) But we humans are so good at missing the point (lol)!
ReplyDeleteI couldn't quite tell what your photo was of this morning. I did love seeing the nuns in those white caps.
ReplyDeleteGreat quote but I'm afraid if we followed it I'd miss those fancy easter bonnets.
ReplyDeleteIn the tradition of fair exchange I've put in a post dedicated to you. This is fun
Petrea, yes, it was great blog fodder (and more, of course).
ReplyDeleteYour quote of Jesus' words from the cross still can be used today, yes.
BTW, I meant the Dillard quote for all of us, whether Christians or not.
Catherine, yep. But of course, it helps to have a brilliant preacher preaching.
Kay, the photo shows two crash helmets on a big BMW motorcyle.
Pasadena Adjacent, thanks for the post about the Jewish contribution to the American West. Don't forget that's where our Levi's jeans started!