Pity And Charity May Be At Root

I Was Read To As A Small Child, I Read On My Own As Soon As I Could, And I Recall Being More Or Less Overwhelmed Again And Again - If Not By What The Books Actually Said, By What They Suggested, What They Helped Me To Imagine.

And There Is No Living Creature, Though The Whims Of Eons Had Put Its Eyes On Boggling Stalks And Clamped It In A Carapace, Diminished It To A Pinpoint And Given It A Taste For Mud And Stuck It Down A Well Or Hid It Under A Stone, But That Creature Will Live On If It Can.

Sometimes I Have Loved The Peacefulness Of An Ordinary Sunday. It Is Like Standing In A Newly Planted Garden After A Warm Rain. You Can Feel The Silent And Invisible Life.

That Odd Capacity For Destitution, As If By Nature We Ought To Have So Much More Than Nature Gives Us. As If We Are Shockingly Unclothed When We Lack The Complacencies Of Ordinary Life. In Destitution, Even Of Feeling Or Purpose, A Human Being Is More Hauntingly Human And Vulnerable To Kindnesses Because There Is The Sense That Things Should Be Otherwise, And Then The Thought Of What Is Wanting And What Alleviation Would Be, And How The Soul Could Be Put At Ease, Restored. At Home. But The Soul Finds Its Own Home If It Ever Has A Home At All.

More Generally, People Who Lived In A Period When Maternal, Infant And Childhood Mortality Were Still High Would Have Been Tougher Than Most Of Us Can Imagine.