The human heart can go to the lengths of God.
Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now.
The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move.
The thunder is the thunder of the floes, the thaw, the flood,
the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up,
to face us everywhere
Never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul
men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.
What are you making for?
It takes so many thousand years to wake.
But will you wake for pity's sake?
Christopher Fry, "A Sleep of Prisoners"
(New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1951)
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(this play was on Broadway in the early 50's, I think it's visionary, especially
for that time. I saw it then and I know it helped wake me up to how activism
can change your attitude to be optimistic in dark times - that was the
McCarthy era, a fearful time and very hard to describe except that the fears
gripping people now seem similar. Actually they are parallel, and not the same.) rb.
[submitted by robin birdfeather; and many thanks to Larry Robinson
for keeping us with the art of ourselves, daily.]