This belt is worn out.
Which diner today?
She almost slipped and fell.
The museum doesn’t open for another eighteen minutes.
She almost slipped and fell.
Which diner today?
At this hour the market is not crowded.
My stomach is growling.
They lost power.
I don’t like this wind.
March 10, 2018
By Hazen Piper
Link to an electronic open-source edition of David McKay’s Harlem Shadows (1922).
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html
Appeal … to the Colored Citizens of the World (Third Edition, 1830)
Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.
“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968
“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” – Theodore Parker, 1853
Perhaps the shape is not an arc but a helix. Theodore Parker said in his sermon, “Of Justice and the Conscience”, that he can divine “the curve and complete the figure” of the moral universe by conscience. The verb to divine means “to discover by intuition or insight”. I do appreciate Theodore Parker’s and Martin Luther King’s intuition and insight but each of us must do our own divining of the moral universe and not simply rely on the divinations of others. My conscience desires justice but does not always intuit the moral universe bending towards it. Perhaps the moral universe bends along the spiraling path of a helix with justice as its axis. Or maybe a double-helix ?
Note: 1853, Ten Sermons of Religion by Theodore Parker, Of Justice and the Conscience, Start Page 66, Quote Page 84-85, Crosby, Nichols and Company, Boston. (Google Books full view) Link