Living Quotations

As a person who appreciates quotations and poetry, I’ve been fortunate to meet people, who, in their own unique ways, have embodied some of my favorite quotations and poetry, bringing them out of the page into life. My friend Kristin for example, exemplifies Thoreau’s quotes of “living deliberately” and “sucking the marrow out of life.” A buddy, Ej, with his uncanny knack of turning otherwise ordinary trips into something extraordinary, gives life to Francis Quarles’, “The world’s an inn, and I am her guest.” Whitman’s song is shared by my friend Susan who is always “afoot and lighthearted” as she takes to the “open road.” The opening lines of Robert Service’s The Tramp bring me back to my dorm-room days with my college buddies:


Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God’s land together,/
And we sang the old, old earth-song for our youth was very sweet;

(Of course, when it comes to my college buddies, there has certainly been more than a few of them that have personified Henry Youngman’s quote: When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.)


Caitlin’s ability to light up a room with her laughter and bring out the best in people is an embodiment of William Saroyan’s “Seek goodness everywhere and when it is found bring it out of its hiding place” and several people I met during my work in the Catholic Institute for La Sallian Social Action (people like James, and Jaime, and Devin, and Casey) embodied Gandhi’s “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Recently, I’ve witnessed two people bring another favorite quote to life.

I’ve always admired these words from Martin Luther King Jr:

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."


I admired the words for its poetry and romanticism but primarily for its message. It’s been a thrill to see it come to life in an extraordinarily ordinary way.


In an earlier blog, I mention my new found appreciation for running around my village lake. What I don’t mention is that on my way back to my home, I pass by a tiny house with a tiny garden. Everyday, there is this kid and his grandmother tending to the garden. I’ve certainly seen people water plants before but for some reason, I’m drawn to this kid and his grandmother and I always stop even for the briefest of moments to watch them at work. There is a consciousness to their actions, something special— not necessarily in the same way that listening to Beethoven’s 9th is special or reading one of Hamlet’s soliloquies or looking up at the paintings of the Sistine (or gazing at the David)—but special nonetheless…in its own simple way.


Perhaps its how the grandmother seems like an extension of the earth as she bends gently tending to the plants or how the kid dutifully fills his bucket with water from the lake across the street and carries it back to the plots or how the two of them, without talking, seem to communicate to the other what needs to be done or how, when juxtaposed against the sunset, their garden seems to blush in golden hues—a manifest illustration of nature’s tranquility.


Or perhaps it’s simply because in their heart of hearts, they were called to work in a garden.


And they do their work well.