"Everything I ever learned as a small boy came from my father
and I never found anything too small or worthless that he told me. What he told
me rings in my mind still."
"Someone would strike up a song…and the valley would ring
with the sound of many voices for singing is in my people, as sight is in the
eye."
"Memory; memory…strange that the mind will forget so much of
what only this moment has passed yet holds clear and bright memory of what happened
years ago…"
"There was never any talk while we were eating. I never met
anybody whose talk was better than good food."
"You've been lucky, Hugh. Lucky to suffer, lucky to spend these weary months in bed, for so God has given you a chance to make a spirit within yourself; and as your Father pleases lamp to have good Light, so keep clean your spirit.
How So?
By prayer, Hugh.And by prayer I don't meaning mumbling or shouting or wallowing like a hog in religious sentiment. Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking.
When you pray, think. Think well what you are saying. Make your thoughts things that are solid and that way your prayer will have strength and that Strength will become part of you, body, mind and spirit."
"Out of the house and across the street as I had run a
hundred times before…straight to Mrs. Turrel’s shop for a piece of that toffee
you could chew for hours, it seems to me now, and even after it has gone down you
could swallow and still find the taste of it hiding behind your tongue. It is
with me now so many years later. It makes me think of much that is good and now
is gone."
This poem inspired in part by lines from How Green Was My Valley
SO much brokenness in this world! And there is no room for finger-pointing because we all need
The One Healer by whose stripes we are healed!
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
