Today’s prompt is to write either a big or a little poem. We’ve spent the evening (after voting) at the cross country banquet, and I am tired, so a small poem will have to suffice. I have been going back and forth about whether that last line should read “leaving” or “going.” I decided on the more pathos-filled version.
autumn dark descends
a plane drones beneath the stars
someone’s leaving home
Gratitude List:
1. These coaches and all the time they give to our children
2. When I brought home a half peck of apples yesterday, someone in the family did a happy apple dance
3. Got home and sat on the couch to write my poem, and immediately had a cat pressed against each hip
4. I love when my books weave together. I am just about to finish My Antonia with a class, and I’m listening to The Personal Librarian. Although they’re in slightly different time periods, Willa Cather lived at the time when Belle da Costa Greene was JP Morgan’s private librarian.
5. People who work for justice
May we walk in Beauty!
“The stories I’m trying to write, and which I want to promote, are stories that contribute to the stability of my own culture, stories that elevate, that keep things from flying apart.” —Barry Lopez
“What the world wants, and people need, are people who believe in Something—Something that will lead them to the good, the beautiful, the true, and the universal.” —Richard Rohr
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” —James Baldwin
“I am not talking about giving our hearts over to despair. I wonder if we can train our hearts, intentionally, like athletes who train for a marathon, to bear the load without crumpling under the weight. I think that’s what the children need from us, for us to bear them, bear the stories, hold them as though they were our own, to be prepared to act at any moment for any one of them within our reach. I think the times call for hearts strong enough to be tender, to bleed without weakening, to rage and protect and pray and hope without numbing out.
“I don’t think it has to be a choice. We don’t have to choose between the closed heart and the broken heart. We can be awake and yet not despair. It’s worth a try.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“If we are going to see real development in the world, then our best investment is in women.” —Desmond Tutu
“Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.” —Alice Walker
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” —Marcus Aurelius
Found on a T-shirt: “I am totally happy and not dangerous mostly.”
“Part of the tragedy of our present culture is that all our attention is on the outer, the physical world. And yes, outer nature needs our attention; we need to act before it is too late, before we ravage and pollute the whole ecosystem. We need to save the seeds of life’s diversity. But there is an inner mystery to a human being, and this too needs to be rescued from our present wasteland; we need to keep alive the stories that nourish our souls. If we lose these seeds we will have lost a connection to life’s deeper meaning—then we will be left with an inner desolation as real as the outer.” —Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Adrienne Rich: “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility of more truth around her.”
“I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands.” —Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
Mockingbird Chronicles 