This was the other all-natural reference that came to mind earlier but took a bit of time to find. From R&J:
ROMEO
No matter: get thee gone,
And hire those horses; I’ll be with thee straight.
Exit BALTHASAR
Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.
Let’s see for means: O mischief, thou art swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
I do remember an apothecary,–
And hereabouts he dwells,–which late I noted
In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones:
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff’d, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scatter’d, to make up a show.
Noting this penury, to myself I said
‘An if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.’
O, this same thought did but forerun my need;
And this same needy man must sell it me.
As I remember, this should be the house.
Being holiday, the beggar’s shop is shut.
What, ho! apothecary!
Finally got to sit down with it in my book this evening. No one could question I’ve read it now; it’s all marked up for a few more readings.
Lush, lavish contrasts between natural and mechanical, all enhanced with various states of consciousness. Goodness!
A couppula sections (at least today. Others will stand out other times). I’m playing a bit with his structural play/weaving to bring specific things to the foreground. My changes are deliberate and reflect the way I think cummings forces us to read his work, if we are going to follow the different threads that run through the jacquard:
“voices to voices, lip to lip
i swear(to noone everyone)constitutes
undying:or whatever this and that petal confutes…
to exist being a particular form of sleep
what’s beyond logic happens beneath will:”
And
" Heaven knows
(yet are we mindful,though not as yet awake,
of ourselves which shout and cling,being
for a little while and which easily break
in spite of the best overseeing)"
Thanks, Mark. So much to enjoy in his work.
This may become the Faith and Science Forum Enhanced by Poetry.
It’s been a long, long time since the tiny bit of Kindergarten HTML I used for a few LIS projects. Awareness of it again is helpful for dealing with screwy formatting issues in the editing pane here.
He does seem to use probability theory in determining genetic outcomes. That’s why doctors can do genetic counseling, to predict your changes of passing on a trait.
Luck and chance are a matter of perspective - I think that is one logical implication of the verse. From a human (and by extension, scientific perspective) many things could be attributed to luck, chance, or randomness. But from God’s perspective, the lot falls where he wills it too. Sometimes that sovereign will is expressed by divine decree, sometimes through carefully designed natural laws, either way, no outcome is outside of his purview. Can I get a Heidelberg High Five, @Dale?
It’s cool that his providence does not have to violate them. The lot is cast into the the lap… whose lap and whom the lot determines or favors is up to him.
Dunno, I just made it up to show some solidarity to my Reformed bro. The Heidelberg Catechism is one of the two major Reformed confessions and I liked the alliteration.
