The Silent Fire: What would you do if your house burned down?

On Sunday July 5th, I came back from Chicago to a burnt house. The house that is directly behind our house burned down, the blackened wood erect in the place of a home. I often saw the house from my kitchen window. I remember a mother walking with an infant son, children playing on a swing, the neatly landscaped backyard. I do not the names or faces of any of these people but I remember the perfect white picket fence.

It's all gone now. My dad reminded me that these houses that we build with so much time and sweat are really just made from plastic and wood. Despite our best efforts to beautify and clean and organize our homes, the very construction is combustible. May God have mercy on the family that lived there.

Comments

Why Not Friendship (Revised)- Repost

It is difficult to be merely a friend to a boy who seems more suitable as a husband than a friend. To reduce a potential life partner to a friend is immature and selfish. Friendship is the not the greatest type of relationship, but it is the safest. Friendship allows you to be intimate without the messiness of other things, like physical attraction, etc. Between friends, there is a warm permanence, a fuzziness that can be called appreciation and gratitude. There is also comfort and trust. Friendship is great if only for the possibility that one can know the beauty of another human being. The possibility of that is worth the difficulty of all else. But sometimes friendship is not enough. Sometimes, to reduce someone to friend when he should be much more is an affront to the opportunity God has presented before you. It is like saying to him, I know that we are amazing together, but we should be friends because I am a dumbass. To reduce him to friend also precludes the possibility of love...

Malcolm Gladwell. "Getting In: The Social Logic of Ivy Leage Admissions" http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html Major themes: 1. Passion is a significant contributor to success. 2. High intelligence means little without discipline and passion. "Bowen and Shulman write about the characteristics that make athletes more coveted by Ivy League schools: One of these characteristics can be thought of as drive--a strong desire to succeed and unswerving determination to reach a goal, whether it be winning the next game or closing a sale. Similarly, athletes tend to be more energetic than the average person, which translates into an ability to work hard over long periods of time--to meet, for example, the workload demands placed on young people by an investment bank in the throes of analyzing a transaction. In addition, athletes are more likely than others to be highly competitive, gregarious and confident of their ability to work well in groups (on teams). I ...

Re: Your Inquiries

"You confuse yourselves with your actions, even with your thoughts. You barely understand that in order to be, it should not be necessary to act, and that the world changes you far more than you change it." (Malraux, The Temptation of the West, 1961 ) The world consists of wonderful people who enter and exit your life. When you let them enter, your breaths seem more thoughtful, your behaviors more scrutinized, your ideas challenged, and sometimes your brain orgasms from happiness. But when these individuals leave, you experience equally significant things like confusion and hurt. It seems okay to let someone in, someone trustworthy, good, honest, and not concern yourself with the end. As things exist in your mind, there is no harm. Intellectual promiscuity, then, is not so bad. To have intimate, intelligent conversations into the morning is not troubling, either. Sometimes when good people enter, it is not necessary to act, or specifically to resist. When people enter, their ...

Letters to My Daughter

Search This Blog