I led Sunday School today with a Poetry for Advent theme: Feeling our Way Into the Darkness. One of the various prompts I offered for writing was to write a poem in a labyrinth. I printed out copies of Lisa Gidlow Moriarty’s Dancing Woman Labyrinth. This afternoon, I pulled phrases from my labyrinth poem to make this.
Darkness calls.
My shadow blends
into shifting Shadow,
and I am borne upon wave
upon wave of indigo shade.
I am uncertain
but unafraid
stepping into
the fresh adventure
of unknowing.
Gratitude List:
1. Crows
2. Treasure trove of snake skins I found in the attic
3. Pileated Woodpecker in the treetops
4. The songs and conversation about Mary in church today. In the stories we tell, so often she has no agency, but we get to choose how we tell the story, who we make of her. For someone who daily prays the rosary, this was a particularly meaningful morning.
5. Poetry, and how it opens us to ideas, to each other, to Words.
May we walk ever in Beauty!
“People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand—what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for—Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind.” —Terry Tempest Williams
“The country is in deep trouble. We’ve forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that’s the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.” —Cornel West (2005)
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” —Jane Austen
Mockingbird Chronicles 