To my dear friend Conrad, this is specially for you.
Off the blog world, I have some friends who follow my posts and prefer to comment through emails rather than to leave comments on the posts. One such friend, a fellow traveller as I call him pointed out these two little nuggets as response to my post Commitment To The Unverifiable.
One – From Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass. The dialogue starts with the White Queen.
“I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Amazing insight! Believing in impossible things becomes easy with practice!
Two – From Catch 22.
Friend’s wife: “But the God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He is not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be”
Yossarin:”Let’s have a little more religious freedom between us. You don’t believe in the God you want to, and I won’t believe in the God I want to.”
I don’t even remember when I read this beauty of a book. Perhaps over four decades ago. I think that it is time I went back to read it again.
Another friend sent me this complaint: “My wife treats me like a GOD..!!
She takes NO notice of my existence till she wants something”.
And another friend Keith, in a different context had recommended some time ago that I watch a BBC series The Indian Doctor. It was only in the last few days that I was able to and in the second series of a three series showing, the doctor has to face a wily reverend who preaches the gospel and eventually turns out to be a charlatan. As I was watching the episodes where the priest is talking about faith, I kept remembering the mail from my friend and that has been the inspiration for this post as well. This is a very watchable series and I strongly recommend it to my readers.
Thanks for the lead . Just watched Ep 1 – nice ! Reminded me in a way of when we were posted to Koratti ! 🙂
So I was about to believe that something constructive might have come out of yesterday’s elections. But then I read this post!
Looney recently posted..From October to Brest Litovsk, by Trotsky (continued)
Of course, my main belief is we’re all a bunch of nuts, and we might as well enjoy the looney bin.
Cheerful Monk recently posted..Modern Voting
You are quite right.
Such intriguing tidbits. Might get me reading new old things….
Mother recently posted..Being Me
I am enjoying re-reading Catch 22!
Ramana, this is absolutely perfect. It fits a slot within me like a key!
The Old Fossil recently posted..Peek a Boo
I knew that it would intrigue you but this comes as a surprise. Thank you.