Christmas Every Day

The trouble with nude dancing is that not everything stops when the music does.

“We must either outlive our friends you know, or our friends must outlive us; and I see no man that would hesitate about the choice.”

“A year from now you will wish you had started today.”

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

The Christian must be aware that he is moving towards a destination; and that the destination is not in this world. He must maintain a certain detachment from the things of this world; a chaste detachment; for where he is going cannot be here. Spectator and witness, perhaps actor in his turn, in some role for which he is or isn’t suited; bearing responsibilities to others in every single case. His suffering may be of more value than any achievement to which he may claim. He cannot vest his hopes in earthly things, knowing they will vanish. His finest possessions are not of this world, but from another: the phenomena of reciprocated love; of truth, goodness, and beauty apprehended, preciously kept in the purse of memory; of “news from a foreign country” received. This is all he will hold at the end of his journey, when his road through space and time lies behind him, and everything he once carried on his back has been used up, thrown or taken away, and even the old bag of his flesh is discarded.

To be conservative is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.