Is it just me or are there quite a few posts on mortality out in the blogosphere today? Is it just fall? The disasters? Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning:
- Dennis the Peasant welcomes Lima Company home.
- FuturePundit notices a study that suggests that people who rely on their physical appearance for self-esteem and people who rely on virtuous behavior for self-esteem behave differently when reminded of their own mortality.
- Allan Sullivan of Fresh Bilge, who’s facing a mortal illness, considers prayer. I’ve always liked this, from Maxwell Anderson’s play about Socrates, Barefoot in Athens:
Beloved Pan, and all you other gods who haunt this city, give me beauty in the inward soul, for outward beauty I’m not likely to have. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy and those who need least to be most like the gods.
Make me content with what I have but not self-satisfied. Let me give more than I get, love more than I hate, and think more of living than of having lived.
And the other is like unto it. From John Bernardone:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.Or this from my ancestor Nicholas of Flüe:
My Lord and my God, remove from me all that may keep me from you. My Lord and my God, give me all that I need to bring me to you. My Lord and my God, take me from myself and give me to yourself.
- Gates of Vienna is one year old.
- Gateway Pundit has a good post on the South Asian earthquake. This site is good, too, especially on relief efforts. Why is it that the number of fatalities in Asia when such disasters happen is so enormous? Lots of people? Low building standards? Lack of emergency response? What?
- For those of you who are wondering what the United Nations is good for, here’s a smurfy response. My next suggested target: Barney. Hat tip: Bill in DC.
That’s the lot.
