UPLift: Pleasure Shared

"I share your pain," we often say —
A friend stands side by side —
But pleasure shared, like children's play,
Swells the gladding tide.

What greater joy or deeper delight
Among the halls of man,
To share the key to human plight,
In God's salvation plan?


Cloudburst: Virtual relations

The big ones get mentioned in this seven-line poem: blogs, Pinterest, Kindle/Nook, Twitter, and Facebook. The ABABCBC rhyme scheme holds it together.

Scrolling down goes late at night,

So says the third line, four meters like the rest. We are too busy online, are we not? That's the point of this poem. I should know.

I was able to get this poem out tonight, thanks to my new writing plan.

The background to this Cloudburst poem got placed here rather than on the website because Tumblr has a lousy interface and Cloudburst is going to move away from there before long.

UPLift: In whom can we trust?

Human beings disappoint, so we become wary and find it hard to trust. Politicians aren't the only ones who fail to carry through with promises. Friends, colleagues, and family members also let us down.

For the latter groups, we need large doses of forgiveness and, sometimes, confrontation about their perfidy, in order to give them opportunity to change.

Looking inward, we discover we ourselves have also made promises that we couldn't keep or that we decided to disregard.

So the following truth about God and his word provides us hope.

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Poetry was dead

Yet another novel, published 1990, declares in a character's viewpoint, "Poetry was dead, or at the very least, breathing its last gasp."

Poetry has always had a hard time of it. It is the neglected child of literature. But not a few death notices have been announced prematurely, and this one fails to recognize the few underground souls who mumble their verses in the shadows and feed upon the scraps of approbation they throw to one another.

Heavy lifting

Time to do some major stuff today. Sunday, three meetings, no time. (Guest speaking at Jardim Esplanada in the morning.) Saturday, one meeting in the afternoon, in Taubaté. Lots to prepare for.

Have got a number of things done this morning. The Missus and I split a plate of chicken stroganoff for lunch up at Roberto's. She's off on errands, I'm buckling down to do lessons and bulletin/order of worship.

I just read about a WV town with nothing electronic. They're in some sort of kill zone for a space telescope. A number of people have moved there, who have electronic hypersensitivity. Bad syndrome for today.