Dying Words

It is said that William Pitt the Younger, when he was dying, said, "My country! How I love my country!" Shakespeare put these dying words on the lips of Hamlet, "the rest is silence." William Saroyan telephoned to the AP before he died in 1981: "Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in...

Divine Presence

Once the Hapsburgs ruled most of Europe. Today only one little country is ruled by a Hapsburg - Liechtenstein. It is 1/250th the size of Switzerland. It has a castle and the royal family lives there. But that has not always been the case. There was a time in history when the ruling family of Liechtenstein did not even come to...

The Cup

Edinburgh, Scotland has a new museum with objects depicting the land's long and varied history. There are ancient rock carvings and almost modern furniture as it might have been seen in a Glasgow tea room at the turn of the century. No object is more interesting than an ornamental drinking cup. Robert the Bruce and and his...

Contradictions

In his great painting The Blue Cloak Peter Bruegel has incorporated at least 78 proverbs, maxims, rhymes and symbols. One shows a woman carrying fire in her right hand and a bucket of water in the left. It is a depiction of an old proverb. To say "she carries fire in one hand and water in the other" means that she holds two...

Citizens

It is very difficult to become a citizen of Liechtenstein. That's true even if you were born there. First there must be a referendum held in your village. If you pass that test you must be voted on by the Prime Minister and his cabinet. Only then can you become a citizen. It rarely happens. There are people in Liechtenstein who...

Bearing Fruit

The bitternut tree does not bear fruit every year. It only bears fruit every three years and sometimes only every five years. The beech tree bears fruit every eight years. The white oak can go ten years without bearing fruit. But the champion in delay is the bamboo which bears fruit only every 120 years! Most Christians don't...

Atheism

Thank God I'm An Atheist is the title of a little book by Rudolph Brasch. He said he got the title from a reported exchange between a disbeliever and a heckler at the famous Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park in London. The contradiction of the statement is obvious. It is as obvious as the true story of the atheist father who was...