“I was all kite and no string.”
One section of my bookshelf includes books that were given to me, which I have never read. I was skimming through this selection of books given to me, picked up at conferences or set aside for “free time” when this title caught my attention. I remembered receiving it at a Catalyst conference a couple of years back. I wasn’t in the mood for another business or theology book so I picked this one up. I am glad I did.
Ian Morgan Cron takes us on a journey of his life growing up with an alcoholic father. Though reading, I felt as if I were experiencing the stories alongside him. This is a tale of riches and poverty, laughter and horror, spirituality and agnosticism. The novel is extremely well-written. While I cannot empathize with the events, I found myself continually connecting with the emotions. Well worth the time to read.
A few quotes I marked along the way include:
- This is a record of my life as I remember it – but more importantly, as I felt it.
- “It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” – Anne Sexton
- Every time I see that photo I’m reminded that we’re all one decision away from disaster.
- One day I became the person I was pretending to be.
- “Die: v.: To stop sinning suddenly.” – Elbert Hubbard
- I would have given anything for my father’s love to not be a secret. Anything. A boy needs a father to show him how to be in the world. He needs to be given swagger, taught how to read a map so that he can recognize the roads that lead to life and the paths that lead to death, how to know what love requires, and where to find steel in the heart when life makes demands on us that are greater than we think we can endure.
- Love is not quick to quit.
- It’s strange the way people trawl for love.
- Men can tell a lot about other men by they way they take care of their shoes.
- “Alcoholism isn’t a spectator sport. Eventually the whole family gets to play.” – Joyce Rebeta-Burditt
- No teenager wants to see someone whose outside looks like the person they feel themselves to be on the inside.
- I’d forgotten the goodness of laughter when it wasn’t tethered to cynicism.
- Love always stoops.
- Drinking is fun until it isn’t.
- Life is easier when you refuse to know what you know.
- She hated to lose more than she loved to win.
- Sometimes it’s wiser to reverence than to parse.
- I didn’t want to parse God – I wanted to be swept up in his glory.
- “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou
- I was all kite and no string.
- “Silence is the language God speaks and everything else is a bad translation.” – Mother Teresa
- The one trait all narcissists possess is the inability to recognize or give importance to other people’s emotions or feelings.
- “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.” – Maya Angelou
- No matter how close we think we are to them, we cannot know the content of their hearts. (of parents)
- We’re only as sick as our secrets.
- There are secrets that we should keep only between God and ourselves.
- I don’t trust people who tell you everything. They’re usually hiding something.
- No one ever wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Today I want to marry an alcoholic who will make the next thirty-three years of my life hell on earth.’ You marry someone because you are twenty-two, are in love, and think you can make a life together. But love-struck twenty-two year olds don’t always have eyes that see and ears that hear.
- They’re not falling; they’re jumping.
- There is a big difference in life between a jump and a fall. A jump is about courage and faith, something the world is in short supply of these days. A fall is, well, a fall.
- “Cleanse my hands, O Lord, from all stain, that, pure in mind and body, I may be worthy to serve Thee.” – preparation prayer of the Holy Eucharist
- “Cleanse me, O Lord, and purify my heart, that being made white in the Blood of the Lamb, I may attain everlasting joy.” – preparation prayer of the Holy Eucharist
- “Gird me, O Lord, with the girdle of purity, and extinguish in me all evil desires, that the virtue of chastity may abide in me.” – preparation prayer of the Holy Eucharist
- “Give me again, O Lord, the stole of immortality, which I lost by the transgression of my first parents, and although I am unworthy to come unto Thy Holy Sacrament, grant that I may attain everlasting felicity.” – preparation prayer of the Holy Eucharist
- “Lord, who hast said, ‘My yoke is easy, and My burden is light,’ grant that I may so bear it, as to attain Thy grace.” – preparation prayer of the Holy Eucharist
- Life is hard enough. No one should eat alone.
- Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. I think he can swim.