Friday, April 8, 2011

Alma 13-6
Nancy Baird - April 5, 2011

                                 

                                            QUOTES FOR ALMA 13-16
                                         

"To believe in God is to believe that all the rules are fair and that there will be wonderful surprises."
  Catholic nun, Nancy Baird's personal files.

About the opera, The Coronation of Poppea:
""...Why do we want to stage a work which suggests that evil wins? ... The sublime love duet at the end of the opera is a celebration by the two most evil people on stage...  It's the absolute focus of the work...
What is the nature of evil and why does it succeed?  It is a formidable enemy...One reason that evil is so powerful is that it is so attractive.  Things we should not do are precisely the things that we want to do the most....[This opera poses] a very complicated question...why are the embodiments of evil so much more attractive than everyone else on stage?" 
Alexander Gelman,  "Opera on the Brink, stage notes.

Ted Bundy, the serial killer, after his arrest, could not comprehend the fuss.  What was the big deal?...  an exasperated Bundy [was quoted saying,] "I mean, there are so many people."
Annie Dillard, For the Time Being, 21.

"Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some cases the other."
 an English Journalist, quoted by Annie Dillard, For the Time Being, 160.

"All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection, provided you continue faithful.  By the vision of the Almighty I have seen it."
Joseph Smith, quoted by Daniel Peterson in Deseret News, March 17, 2011.

"There are spiritual disorders... and spiritual diseases that can cause intense suffering. The body and the spirit of man are bound together...very often it is very difficult to tell which is which."
Elder Boyd K. Packer, in Conference Report, Oct. 1977, 89.



TWO DAUGHTERS, MEETING IN PARIS


        All your children here,
        In their rags of light.
                          Leonard Cohen

This child glides through life
on dreams, whistling fingers;
titian-haired, leopard-eyed,
she masks her mind and heart.
The other, for all her fierce intelligence
hovers close to my arms,
eats hope for bread.

Fragrant breath on the pillow,
their childhoods vanished
as pipesmoke in the morning.
Precious clay, still fingered in innocence,
I tell you:
there are real dragons,
they will eat your heart
like a radish.

In the lens on a September morning,
the two of them, at five and six,
quiver to escape.
Imprisoned hair, lunch box, canary ribbons,
they are already slicking the road
with their flashing feet.
At nineteen and twenty
they skim the membrane of darkness, light,
move carefully through the crusty,
soil-filled cities.

I meant to tell them:
even the children of Lamech,
practiced in the secrets of Cain,
long for something real.
But this they have already learned
through my blood, flesh, and milk:
what is real,
if they have the strength to see,
if they can remember.

                 Nancy Hanks Baird



Alma 13-6 :Nancy Baird - April 5, 2011(Audio)