The Offices rerooted me in a tradition where, monk or not, I would always be at home. From long ago I knew the power of their repetition, the incantatory force of the Psalms. But they had an added power now. As a kid, the psalmist (or psalmists) had seemed remote to me, the Psalms long prayers which sometimes rose to great poetry but often had simply to be endured. For a middle-aged man, the psalmists' moods and feelings came alive. One of the voices sounded a lot like a modern New Yorker, me or people I knew: a manic-depressive type A personality sometimes up, more often down, sometimes resigned, more often pissed off, railing about his sneaky enemies and feckless friends, always bitching to the Lord about the rotten hand he'd been dealt. That good old changelessness. .Tony Hendra
About This Quote
The lyrics to the song, "The Offices," by poet and musician Nick Cave, speak of the power of the offices to reroot him in a tradition where he would always be at home. From long ago he knew the power of their repetition, the incantatory force of the Psalms. But they had an added power now. As a young man, the psalmists had seemed remote to him, the Psalms long prayers which sometimes rose to great poetry but often had simply to be endured.
For a middle-aged man, the psalmists' moods and feelings came alive and they spoke in a voice that was much like his own. One of the voices sounded a lot like a modern New Yorker: manic-depressive, A personality often up, more often down, sometimes resigned, sometimes pissed off railing about his sneaky enemies and feckless friends always bitching to God about the rotten hand he'd been dealt. That good old changelessness.
Some Similar Quotes
- And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
- Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.
- No woman wants to be in submission to a man who isn't in submission to God!
- His hands are holding my cheeks, and he pulls back just to look me in the eye and his chest is heaving and he says, "I think, " he says, "my heart is going to explode, " and I wish, more than ever, that I...
- Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?
More Quotes By Tony Hendra
- History was a way to live extra lives, to cheat the limits of flesh and blood, to roll the rock back from the tomb and free the resurrected dead.
- History was not simply a catalogue of the dead and buried and benighted, but rather a vast new world to be pioneered; ..if you approached the past generously, so to speak–its people as humans, not facts, as modern in their time as we were in...
- You see, dear– I think there are two types of people in the world. Those who divide the world up into two kinds of people... and those who don't.
- People are always changing themselves and their world, dear. Very few of the changes are new. We rather confuse change and newness, I think. What is truly new never changes."" You speak in riddles, aged progenitor."" The world worships a certain kind of newness. <span...
- Feelings trap us in the self, Tony dear. Doing a thing because you feel wonderful about it–even a work of charity–is in the end a selfish act. We perform the work not to feel wonderful but to know and love the other. It's the same...