My blog spam has fallen the last two days. Today’s was around 900, yesterday’s 1400, the day before 1600. It’s hard not to ascribe it to the US midterm campaign. But who knows?

So a few of the people I voted for were actually elected yesterday. Peters for Senate and several of the College board members. They were all Democrats. But mostly Republicans trounced Democrats here in Michigan as they did in other places.

Millages passed. The wolf proposals all failed. I voted for the millages and against the wolf proposals.

Few surprises in today’s national results. Too bad but there you go.

I tried to relax yesterday. Tuesday is truly my one day entirely off with nothing scheduled. Wednesday is shaping up as my roughest day. I managed to look at some Xmas choral music on Monday between classes. Today I want to print up at least one new anthem for this evening.

Also I just dumped a psalm into my laptop so I can work on that today as well. The goal is to have the psalms for this Sunday and the following Sunday in the hands of singers tonight. That’s probably doable.

I don’t have much time to blog this morning. But I think I want to put a couple of quotes up just in case some of my religious readers happen by and don’t know them.

Thomas Merton was (is?) a long time hero of mine. I have read of tons of his works. He is my kind of Roman Catholic: intellectual, tolerant and insightful. He has also influenced Jupe the church guy:

A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book, even though it is about the love of God. There are many who think that because they have written about God, they have written good books. Then men pick up these books and say if the ones who say they believe in God cannot find anything better than this to say about it, their religion cannot be worth much.

from  “Poets” in New Directions 17, Thomas Merton

and in 1960 he wrote

… [I]n an age of concentration camps and atomic bombs, religious and artistic sincerity will certainly exclude all ‘prettiness’ or shall sentimentality. Beauty, for us, cannot be a mere appeal to conventional pleasures of the imagination and senses. Nor can it be found in cold, academic perfectionism. The art of our time, sacred art included, will necessarily be characterized by a certain poverty, grimness and roughness which correspond to the violent realities of a cruel age. Sacred art cannot be cruel, but it must know how to be compassionate with the victims of cruelty: and ONE DOES NOT OFFER LOLLIPOPS TO A STARVING MAN IN A TOTALITARIAN DEATH-CAMP. NOR DOES ONE OFFER HIM THE MESSAGES OF A PITIFULLY INADEQUATE OPTIMISM. from “Sacred Art and the Spiritual Life” caps added.