(no subject)

People have to make up their minds and cannot keep waiting for ever for a sign from heaven, for a solution to the difficulty to fall into their laps... Postponed or belated decisions can be more sinful than wrong decisions made in faith and love... To believe means to decide.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1934, on the ecumenical movement, but it is more generally true, I think (it might also be taken as an epitaph on a number of basically decent contemporaries of Bonhoeffer, for instance).

(no subject)

On a less elevated and very much more sybaritic note, am about to sit down to cold chicken (slow-roasted yesterday with thyme, rosemary, paprika), cous-cous with sundried tomatoes, and what I suspect may be the last of the English asparagus.

No wine, but after the washing up there will be one or two gins and tonic and West Wing. I've been drinking Blackwoods of late, which is lovely, remarkably delicate (it contains all manner of interesting Shetland botanicals).