quote-able writers

Forgive my absence from the blog-o-sphere. Much has happened since I last blogged.
- I moved to a new city.
- I left an organization that I had worked with for 7 years.
- I got a new job.
- I had a birthday.
- I went to San Diego and Dallas.
- I participated in a Nigerian/Sicilian wedding.
- I surfed at San Onofre and got bumped on the head with a surfboard.
- I surfed at First Point in Malibu and got a little eye infection.
- I am wondering how to surf without getting injured.

Those are just the externals. The internal churning is still happening too. But, that blog would take more work and energy than I can handle right now.

But, I did finish a book recently which contained some pearls of wisdom, the kind that I want to clasp onto in the recess of my brain (or blog) and recall at certain moments of life. I didn't think I'd like Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, but it surprised me. Here are a couple fave passages:

If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line - starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding to logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will (p. 133).

*****

I can't look back from where I am now and feel that I have been very much in charge of my life. Certainly I have lived on the edge of the Port William community, and I am farther than ever out on the edge of it now. But I feel that I have lived on the edge of even my own life. I have made plans enough, but I see now that I have never lived by plan. Any more than if I had been a bystander watching me live my life. I don't feel that I ever have been quite sure what was going on. Nearly everything that has happened to me has happened by surprise. All the important things have happened by surprise. And whatever has been happening usually has already happened before I have had time to expect it. The world doesn't stop because you are in love or in mourning or in need of time to think. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening partly in time? (p. 322).

****
No doubt that the many changes in my life cause resonance with Jayber and his very ordinary life. But beneath the everyday lies the depth.