Original Poetry from Dietrich Balsbaugh
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“An Answer to my Brother’s Phone Calls from Manhattan”
Original Poetry from Geoffrey Ayers
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“In Gratitude to the Bees”
Original Poetry from Kate Champagne
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“Sleep Unto Death”
Original Poetry from David Ehrenman
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The Trip to Fallsburg
“Fallsburg. Calling at Fallsburg,” the announcer said as the train hissed to a standstill. I hadn’t planned to leave the city during my trip, but after elbowing through the swarm upon swarm of tourists, even a day’s escape sounded like heaven. Every town has a list of unmissable sights; however, I found delightfully little written about Fallsburg. When one of the few reviews mentioned what sounded like missing the open arms of a tourist trap, I bought my ticket.
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When I Feel Small
Maybe, though, just maybe, it’s ok to face the fear as a small Whitefoot mouse does. “The little life she had, she loved dearly, and so far she had taken excellent care of it.”
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The Film is the Holy Fool: A Conversation with Filmmaker Josh David Jordan
When we try new things, sometimes we feel like a fool. But if we are not willing to be a fool, then we will never know how to start a new thing, or how to make it better. — Fr. John
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The Courage to Let Things Be
And that’s where the heart of the matter lies—not just in how we read a story, but in how we engage the world itself. Do we approach the world to live with it—or to take it apart in order to dominate it?
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Anne Lamott on Perfection and Imperfection
I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.
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Asimov on Perfection and Imperfection
It is human to feel imperfect. That was what you wanted, above all else: to be human. And now that is what you are. The imperfections — the weaknesses — the imprecisions — they are the very things which define humans as human. And which drive them to transcend their own failings.
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Hardy on Perfection and Imperfection
How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman’s lips and teeth which forced upon…
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Gaiman on America
This is the only country in the world that worries about what it is. The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.