As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; / As tumbled over rim in roundy wells / Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's / Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; / Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: / Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; / Selves -- goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, / Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.// Í say móre: the just man justices/ [Gerard Manley Hopkins]

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In "Four Cultures of the West," John O'Malley, SJ, showed us how to read the open book of our own personal experience and look at what we find there. This is what I find about family and friends, academics and humanism, religion and the rule of law.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Presidential Campaign 2012


Remember when presidential campaigns of yore
Differed from this one on substance and issues.
But then, who can forget the year of Bush v. Gore,
Without reaching for a box of Kleenex tissues?

Candidates no longer speak as real men fighting on,
Day after day, wherever, out on the stump,
Pumping arms, beaming smiles in rain or sun,
Never daring to admit they might be in a slump.

You cannot count on them to come nobly through,
When their campaign starts slinging slander and lies
On political stuff they never did or even knew.
Campaigners past rarely dared tarnish the prize,

The one they sought in the vote you’d cast.
Flip-flops on issues and lies on what’s essential
Would smote them dumb, as if aghast,
For who’d vote for a liar so unpresidential?

A political party changes the tune this forlorn year,
Marked out of every four as a presidential campaign,
Blackened by attacks, lies flipped from downdeep fear
Oozing from the Republican Twain of Legerdemain.

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