The Parable of the Sower - from The Gospel of Luke, 8:4-16

And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable:

A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.

And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture.

And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it.

And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried,

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be?

And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.

Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.

They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.

And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.

But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.

No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light.

Franz Wright, from "The Window"

“…Can I ask you a question? Those moths in November, where are they now, do you think? You remember. We’d see them each evening around three in the afternoon; first a few, then a bucketful, and all at once millions, everywhere. The cold arrived, the cold that really means it, and they were gone. They simply vanished, the way we all do in the end, but what does that mean? What does it mean, to say “Where are they?” Where are we? We change, all right; but where else, strange fellow moths, is there to go but the world? I saw the first trillions of snowflakes today as the light was beginning to change, to darken, blowing and swirling across the bare back fields and back roads. Like you and I, they did as they were told. To things already here, we were called forth and asked to join them, asked to live. Not forever, not even very long. But we are called forth, we are brought here, and we are not brought here to die. I’ve been looking at Edvard Munch’s The Sick Child, for the first time since I was nineteen. The girl is sitting up in bed, a green blanket pulled up to her waist, the mother seated facelessly beside her to the left; her left hand and the child’s are clasped, knitted together, like the spot where a broken bone was healed. Then there is the child’s thinning hair, the poor skull showing through the sparse wisps of it: it makes you think of an infant’s, the little continents of bone still closing. Hair the color of the red wine in the half-full glass that’s glowing on a table in the foreground, in the half-light. Her head is turned sharply to the left, her line of sight passing right over the woman’s bowed head in the direction of some unseen source of light—I always thought it was a window, but who’s to say it’s not a mirror. I see that now. Face beaming or reflecting from the depths of resignation, with a small exhausted smile of utmost sweetness, an unmistakable expression of gladness toward the outer world, the sight of things exactly as they are, and expressing the sum of all knowledge regarding that world: it is still there…”

- Franz Wright, from “The Window”, in Kindertotenwald

Coronation Cross

“…The back of the cross is adorned with words from the last sermon of St. David, the patron saint of Wales, in Welsh: "Byddwch lawen. Cadwch y ffydd. Gwnewch y pethau bychain," translating to: ‘Be joyful. Keep the faith. Do the little things.’”

From "Tender is the Night"

“…His love for Nicole and Rosemary, his friendship with Abe North, with Tommy Barban in the broken universe of the war’s ending—in such contacts the personalities had seemed to press up so close to him that he became the personality itself—there seemed some necessity of taking all or nothing; it was as if for the remainder of his life he was condemned to carry with him the egos of certain people, early met and early loved, and to be only complete as they were complete themselves. There was some element of loneliness involved—so easy to be loved—so hard to love.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald