Today’s prompt is to write a luck poem. I’m having fun playing with internal rhyme and watching how it drives the line forward, how it pushes into the meaning of the following line. It’s almost like putting a puzzle together, and almost like following a large willful dog on a leash.
Where do you go to find your lost luck? Look where it settles in ditches, and hitches itself into trees, where it sees through the mists into the distance and takes the long view.
Watch how it grew when you thought you had bought the last morsel of hope, how the rope which had bound you dissolved from around you, and you suddenly found yourself once again free.
Would you be here if not for the seeking, the desperate pleading when all seemed so lost, when all hope was tossed into the whirlwind, the promises hindered, the heart’s desire stuck, and then here you are, free to seek for fresh luck.
Gratitude List: 1. Student delightfully self-congratulating a Duolingo success: “Yes, Grrrl! You got it!” 2. This morning’s autumn mist on the fields between Marietta and Mt. Joy. 3. I never know what is going to draw a whole class into discussion. I try every angle I can, and sometimes, everyone is suddenly jumping in, on fire with ideas. Today was one of those days in our upper division discussion about My Antonia. They had had enough background already in social studies classes regarding “Manifest Destiny” (idea and painting) that even my quietest introvert pushed himself up out of his chair and came up to the front of the room to point out his ideas about the painting. (YESSSSS!) 4. Analyzing characterization through the lens of the D and D alignment chart 5. Playing with words May we walk in Beauty!
“Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love’s path is communication.” ― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.” ―Gandalf
“When I stopped trying to change you, you changed me.” ―Rachel Macy Stafford
“When will the change begin? When will it start to happen? We have waited so long and prayed so long, when will the light begin to shine in this conflicted world? Our answer is: when we each begin to see it in ourselves. When we believe and not despair, when we love and not fear, when we give and not take – then we will see the change start to happen, and happen all around us. The answer is already here, within, waiting for us to find it.” —Steven Charleston
“When Teresa of Avila was asked what she did in prayer, she replied, ‘I just allow myself to be loved.'” —Anthony de Mello
“I never lose. I either win or I learn.” —Nelson Mandela
“If you have never been called an incorrigible, defiant, impossible woman… have faith. There is yet time.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Today’s prompt at the Writer’s Digest poetry blog is to write an odd poem. I was feeling uninspired, so I decided to just started typing and let myself mostly free-associate. It ended up not really being as odd as I thought it might be, and it kind of hangs together surprisingly well. I think I sort of made up a story. . .
the last thing she said before she left was something about how memory evades interpretation how the ends don’t always justify the meanings how the sparkle in your eyes seemed to have dimmed over time because of the way the Old Ones never wanted to reveal themselves
the first thing she said when she returned was that she had never known anyone who reminded her so much of her long-lost lover as you on the day when you stood in the dark garden and swore allegiance to the moon
the way she looked at you the way she her eyes drifted off to the side of the frame when you took that portrait someone hung in the gallery on the corner of Seventh and Lime
the way you could never seem to say her name without the briefest pause beforehand as though you were forgetting or reluctant to commit the act of resurrecting her memory
Gratitude List: 1. We saw one of the white squirrels in Palmyra today! It was in a yard with two crows. It looked like they were having a meeting 2. Chocolate cake. I am working so hard to keep my sugar under control, but I am also not living a life of complete self-deprivation, and that was good cake 3. I think I am mostly over the achiness of the Covid/flu vaccine double whammy 4. Just hanging out here with the kid and the cats 5. Pumpkin soup and sauteed cauliflower May we walk in Beauty!
“It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.” —Leonard Cohen
Denise Levertov: Don’t say, don’t say there is no water to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen The fountain springing out of the rock wall and you drinking there. And I too before your eyes found footholds and climbed to drink the cool water.
The woman of that place, shading her eyes, frowned as she watched–but not because she grudged the water, only because she was waiting to see we drank our fill and were refreshed.
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water. The fountain is there among its scalloped grey and green stones, it is still there and always there with its quiet song and strange power to spring in us, up and out through the rock.
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in. —Leonard Cohen
“Remember that day in the woods when everything was so dark, so dreary and you were so terrifyingly alone?
How can it be that these are the same woods and you the same soul and everything shines so, and everything is filled with life?” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“Acquiring problems is a fundamental human need. It’s as crucial to your well-being as getting food, air, water, sleep, and love. You define yourself–indeed, you make yourself–through the riddles you attract and solve. The most creative people on the planet are those who frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers.” —Rob Brezsny
“We are free-falling into the future on a bed of broken symbols.” —attributed to Joseph Campbell
“We aren’t disturbing the peace. We’re disturbing the war.” —protest sign
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, but the most important part is not to be afraid.”
Kirumi Bridge, across the Mara River: Ming’aro Pictures Empire
Brewer’s prompt today is to write a Childhood Object poem. A couple days ago, I was scrolling around Tanzania on Google Earth, and saw a bridge over the Mara River where we used to cross by ferry when I was a child. I think the last time I was there in 1988, there was already a bridge, but I was suddenly flooded with memories of waiting for the ferry at the Mara River. There’s even a little video of drone footage of the bridge on Youtube.
I have never seen it, but there’s a bridge there now across the Mara, steel and concrete on the Sirari Road. You used to need to catch the ferry to cross, waiting on the eastern shore of the river, bulrushes and papyrus lining the banks. What crocodile would have been bold enough to lurk among them, with the rattle and rev of lorries and garis lined up for the next crossing? Even fifty years later, and half a world away, I pass a truck idling diesel fumes, and I am back again on that riverbank, the sun sparkling on the water, the hum of Swahili in the drowsing afternoon, the distant ferry approaching from from the Mwanza side.
Gratitude List: 1. The threads which connect dreams to waking life 2. My colleagues–daily I am grateful for this thoughtful and caring group of people 3. Ethiopian food–Jon shared his leftovers 4. Origami–I love the meditative nature of paper folding–I have been making zhen xian bao (Google it) 5. Weaving the pieces together. May we walk in Beauty!
“No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member— No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds— November!” —Thomas Hood, No!
“I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” —Mary Oliver
“Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.” —Muriel Rukeyser
“We discover the Earth in the depths of our being through participation, not through isolation or exploitation. We are most ourselves when we are most intimate with the rivers and mountains and woodlands, with the sun and the moon and the stars in the heavens… We belong here. Our home is here. The excitement and fulfillment of our lives is here… Just as we are fulfilled in our communion with the larger community to which we belong, so too the universe itself and every being in the universe is fulfilled in us.” —Thomas Berry, The Sacred Universe
Words of Howard Zinn: “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t ‘win,’ there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.
“An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.
“If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.” ―Jelaluddin Rumi
“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.” –Roald Dahl, The Witches
“For women who are tied to the moon, love alone is not enough. We insist each day wrap its’ knuckles through our heart strings and pull. The lows, the joy, the poetry. We dance at the edge of a cliff. You have fallen off. So it goes. You will climb up again.” –Anais Nin
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
“On such a day each road is planned To lead to some enchanted land; Each turning meets expectancy. The signs I read on every hand. I know by autumn’s wizardry On such a day the world can be Only a great glad dream for me– Only a great glad dream for me!” –Eleanor Myers Jewett, “An Autumn Day”
“Change is not merely necessary to life, it is life.” –Alvin Toffler
“In the morning I went out to pick dandelions and was drawn to the Echinacea patch where I found a honeybee clinging to one of the pink flowers. She seemed in distress, confused and weak. She kept falling off the flower and then catching herself in midair and flying dizzily back. She kept trying to get back to work, to collect her pollen and nectar to take home to the hive to make honey but she was getting weaker and weaker and then she fell into my hand. I knew she would never make it back to her hive. For the next half hour she rested in my palm, her life slowly ebbing away as a thunderstorm started to brew. I sat on the earth waiting for death with her. The lightening flashed over the mountains, a family of turkeys slowly walked the ridge, a wild dog keyed into what was happening circled past us. The trees appeared startlingly vivid and conscious as the wind blew up and the thunder cracked and then her death was finished. She was gone forever. But in her going she taught me to take every moment as my last flower, do what I could and make something sweet of it.” –Layne Redmond
Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all. –Thomas Merton
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” –Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein
“Learn to tell the story of the red leaves against water. Read the alphabet of walnut branches newly bared for winter. Become literate in the language of cricket and of wren, of the footsteps of skunk and the changeability of weather.
Interpret the text of the wind in the hollow. Scan the documents of cloud and constellation. Enter the tale of rose hip and nettle and sassafras. Study Wisdom and she will find you.” –Beth Weaver-Kreider
“Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.” –Khalil Gibran
“Awake, my dear! Be kind to your sleeping heart. Take it out into the vast fields of Light and let it breathe.” ―Hafez (Ladinsky)
“We who hobnob with hobbits and tell tales about little green men are used to being dismissed as mere entertainers, or sternly disapproved of as escapists. But I think perhaps the categories are changing, like the times. Sophisticated readers are accepting the fact that an improbable and unmanageable world is going to produce an improbable and hypothetical art. At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.” —Ursula K. Le Guin
Today is the last day of National Poetry Month. It has been another marvelous month. I have felt like the Muse was active more days this month than not, for which I am grateful. I never know when I begin these things whether I am going to hit a wall by day ten and have to slog through to the end. I’m grateful that there was so much to find and follow this month.
I have four more weeks of school, and then I’ll hopefully have time to do some editing. I really want to commit to going through my work and pulling together another book. But I have said that several times in the past few years, so I need to find the Key in order to make it happen.
The rosary prayers go in a cycle of three sets: The Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries, and the Glorious Mysteries. There is a fourth set that was added by Pope John Paul II, but I haven’t studied those. As I have been praying the rosary since August, I have been meditating on the mysteries as a Path of Initiation to Enlightenment. I believe we are repeating this cycle over and over again in our lives, and the three-day cycle of repetition in the rosary cycle offers a way to meditate on one’s current cycle of transformation.
The Joyful Mysteries are about hearing and accepting the call to transformation: 1. The Annunciation: Hearing the call, meeting the beloved angel being, saying Yes, consenting to the process 2. The Visit with Elizabeth: Mentoring, wise confidante, comfort and counsel 3. The Birth: Stepping onto the path, hatching, the seed bursts forth, the initiation 4. The Elder Blessing: Blessing and commissioning by the priest/priestess, they say: “I have waited my whole life for this!” 5. The Finding in the Temple: Finding the purpose, defining the vision of the initiation story
The Sorrowful Mysteries are about meeting the challenges of the enlightenment journey: 1. The Agony in the Garden: Facing betrayal and abandonment, anxiety about what is to come 2. The Flogging in the Temple: Pain, the reality of betrayal, enduring the torture 3. The Crown of Thorns: Being shamed and mocked, standing shameless in the face of taunting 4. The Bearing of the Cross: Picking up the work that must happen even in the midst of trauma and anguish 5. Death: Death, loss, symbolic death, end of old life and way of being
The Glorious Mysteries are about stepping into the truth of the new way: 1. Resurrection: Symbolic rebirth, restoration, revivifying, re-energizing, re-awakening 2. Ascension into Heaven: Stepping back onto the path with Enlightenment in sight 3. The Descent of the Holy Spirit: Tongues of fire, new language, deep connection to Spirit, recollection of “This is my Beloved Child in whom I am well pleased.” 4. The Assumption of the Virgin: Taking up the priestessing role, putting on the mantle 5. The Coronation of the Virgin: The Summoning to the coronation of the Queen, living in the glory of the Mystery
This past summer, when I felt caught in cycles of unrelenting Sorrowful Mysteries, it was a comfort to meditate every three days on the process of meeting the challenges and then to remind myself that the Glorious Mysteries follow. And of course, while this is a linear telling, there’s also a layering quality, a sense in which we live all the stages at once.
Gratitude List: 1. Denise Levertov’s poetry 2. Writing practice. I long to have a writer’s life, but in the meantime, I can carve out time for a consistent writing practice 3. Circles of beloved community 4. The quiet misty green of the grove in the morning 5. Always new things to learn May we walk in Beauty!
“Things aren’t so tangible and sayable as people would have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are world of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
“We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into a new way of thinking.” —Richard Rohr
“To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” —Georgia O’Keeffe
“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.” ―Rebecca Solnit
“The child’s hand Folding these wings Wins no wars and ends them all. “ ―Thomas Merton
“I never sanction violence. Never. But I wonder how we got to the point when destruction of property deserves greater coverage and a greater portion of our attention than the destruction of human life. Since when do shattered windows matter more than shattered spines, shattered voice boxes, and shattered dreams? When did we become a people who mourn the destruction of things over the destruction of lives?” —Omid Safi
Today was Lancaster’s Race Against Racism, a couple-thousand-person 5K, in which the community works to raise money for the anti-racism efforts of the local YWCA. I haven’t walked it in six years. Last time, I walked/ran with my then-8-year-old. Today my husband and I walked while the kid, now 14 and a tall leggy runner, ran. He did it in a little over twenty minutes. Jon finished in just over an hour, and I was about ten minutes behind Jon. I walked with a friend who is also somewhat short, and we had a rich conversation while strolling through the city.
A couple days ago, Robert Lee Brewer’s prompt was to write and anapodoton poem. An anapodoton, according to Wiktionary, is “a rhetorical device in which a main clause of a phrase that is not mentioned is implied by a subordinate clause that is mentioned.” I didn’t write one then, but today’s prompt to write about something you see, offered me the “What you see” phrase.
Gratitude List: 1. Lancaster and York Cities and their Races Against Racism. Such important work. 2. Good friends and good conversations 3. My siblings 4. My parents 5. The green glow of trees breathing May we walk in Beauty!
“To love, my brothers and sisters, does not mean we have to agree. But maybe agreeing to love is the greatest agreement. And the only one that ultimately matters, because it makes a future possible.” —Michael B. Curry
“The path isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths.” —Barry H. Gillespie
“Immature people crave and demand moral certainty: This is bad, this is good. Kids and adolescents struggle to find a sure moral foothold in this bewildering world; they long to feel they’re on the winning side, or at least a member of the team. To them, heroic fantasy may offer a vision of moral clarity. Unfortunately, the pretended Battle Between (unquestioned) Good and (unexamined) Evil obscures instead of clarifying, serving as a mere excuse for violence — as brainless, useless, and base as aggressive war in the real world.” —Ursula K Le Guin
“There is room for you at our table, if you choose to join us.” —Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing
“For beautiful to happen, the beautiful has got to be seen.” —from the musical “Ordinary Days”
“You will be found.” —from the musical “Dear Evan Hansen” ****” “How do you become the person you’ve forgotten you ever were?” —from the musical “Anastasia”
“The universe is not made up of atoms; it’s made up of tiny stories.” ―Joseph Gordon-Levitt
To all the children by Thomas Berry
To the children who swim beneath The waves of the sea, to those who live in The soils of the Earth, to the children of the flowers In the meadows and the trees of the forest, To all those children who roam over the land And the winged ones who fly with the winds, To the human children too, that all the children May go together into the future in the full Diversity of their regional communities.
Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
“Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth.” ―Rumi (Barks)
“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.” ―Isabel Allende
“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy – the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” ―Bréne Brown, Wholehearted
After several false starts today, I just wrote about the difficulty of catching a poem.
Gratitude List: 1. That moment in Math class when we were doing a division drill, and a student suddenly looked up with wonder in her eyes and said, “I get it! This is just the opposite of multiplication!” Yes, oh yes, oh yes! It doesn’t matter that I had already said it and pointed it out over and over and over again–until her brain was ready to make the connection, it didn’t make sense. But today she got it. On her own. 2. Spring rain. I was chilly all day. Still, it feels like this is how spring is supposed to feel. 3. Support systems, webs, communities of care 4. Book sales! Kreutz Creek Valley Library began its sale today 5. All the colors of green May we walk in Beauty!
“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.” —Diane Ackerman
“I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.” ―Wendell Berry
“A crone is a woman who has found her voice. She knows that silence is consent. This is a quality that makes older women feared. It is not the innocent voice of a child who says, “the emperor has no clothes,” but the fierce truthfulness of the crone that is the voice of reality. Both the innocent child and the crone are seeing through the illusions, denials, or “spin” to the truth. But the crone knows about the deception and its consequences, and it angers her. Her fierceness springs from the heart, gives her courage, makes her a force to be reckoned with.” —Jean Shinoda Bolen
“Go as far as you can see; when you get there you’ll be able to see farther.” —Thomas Carlyle
“At the end of the day, I’d rather be excluded for who I include than included for who I exclude.” —Eston Williams
“Free me. . .from words, that I may discover the signified, the word unspoken in the darkness.” —Byzantine Prayer
“Father, Mother, God, Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days. For then we have you to lean upon. For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak. For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness. For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing. Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most—Peace.” —Maya Angelou
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” —Leonard Bernstein
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.” —Mary Oliver
“If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” —Harper Lee
“Some days, you don’t know whether you are stepping on earth or water or air. Place each foot carefully before you and offer your weight gratefully to whatever it is that holds you.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
Usually during a poetry-writing month, I start to lose steam at around the 15th. This month, I have had one or two days that felt like toss-offs, like today, but mostly I have staved off the fretfulness this month. I’ve abandoned the daily prompts at Write Better Poetry more often than not, but I feel like this is a stronger batch than sometimes. Now I’m just going to need to do some editing this summer. Ugh. I say that every summer.
Gratitude List: 1. Catnaps 2.Beads 3. Crochet 4. Chocolate macaroons 5. Anticipating summer May we walk in Beauty!
“You know you’re on the right path if your capacity for holding paradox expands, your sense of humor broadens, your commitment to justice deepens, your compassion for and protection of life grows, and your love of people transcends race, color, creed, tribe, religion, politics and sexual [orientation].” —Rabbi Rami Shapiro
“It’s not fair,” Linus said, staring off into nothing. “The way some people can be. But as long as you remember to be just and kind like I know you are, what those people think won’t matter in the long run. Hate is loud, but I think you’ll learn it’s because it’s only a few people shouting, desperate to be heard. You might not ever be able to change their minds, but as long as you remember you’re not alone, you will overcome.” —excerpt from The House in the Cerulean Sea, T.J. Klune
“As truly as God is our father, so truly is God our mother.” —Julian of Norwich
“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.” ―Anaïs Nin
“Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.” ―William Wordsworth
Forever Oneness, who sings to us in silence, who teaches us through each other. Guide my steps with strength and wisdom. May I see the lessons as I walk, honor the Purpose of all things. Help me touch with respect, always speak from behind my eyes. Let me observe, not judge. May I cause no harm, and leave music and beauty after my visit. When I return to forever may the circle be closed and the spiral be broader. ―Bee Lake (Aboriginal poet)
“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.” ―Joseph Campbell
“I can’t tell you why your story is important, only that it is.” ―Mara Eve Robbins
“Time is like dragons. They are both imaginary, yet can eat you anyway.” —The Cryptonaturalist
Heather Havrilesky: “The antidote to a world that tells us sick stories about ourselves and and poisons us into thinking we’re helpless is believing in our world and in our communities and in ourselves.”
“Whatever happens to you, don’t despair.
Even if all the doors are closed, there will be a secret path for you, that no one knows.
You can’t see it yet, but many paradises are at the end of this journey.” —Rumi
Seeking to rewild my spirit, to return to raw instinct, to strengthen my senses, to adventure in those wild inner spaces. . .
Gratitude List:
Jon found my rosary! It’s been missing for more than a week. It will feel good to feel its heft again during my prayers in the morning.
Such a funny moment on the way home today. Driving along Picking Road, we had to stop while a flock of about ten pure black chickens moseyed across the road. And I know why the chickens crossed the road! I have the answer! They were following the turkey! The turkey was right there waiting for them on the other side, and they followed him across!
Chilly spring rains
The greens, the pinks, the yellows, the blue, the blue the blue!
Rosemary bread May we walk in Beauty!
“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” —Simone Weil
“You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.” —Leymah Gbowee
“God speaks to each of us as [she] makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
“I do not see a delegation of the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles.” —Chief Oren Lyons, Onondaga
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” —Kurt Vonnegut
“I told them we’re tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re for, I said, not just what we’re against. We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff—biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice—but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask.” ―Rachel Held Evans
Go deeper. Past thoughts into silence. Past silence into stillness. Past stillness into the heart. Let love consume all that is left of you. —Kabir
The prompt was to write a dream/reality poem. I’ve never been a fan of poetic lines centered on the page, but somehow this one asked for that. You have to begin reading at the bottom, and rise to the top.
Gratitude List: 1. How dreams wake us up 2. Hot tea on a chilly night 3. Sorting out the feelings 4. Dawnsong in Spring 5. Anticipating Oriole’s Return May we walk in Beauty!
“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians. As far as I’m concerned, it’s their choice, but I CHOOSE to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved. Young people, black and white, know this. That’s why they’re so involved in politics. We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. So I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and NOT reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.” —Nina Simone
“A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.” —Rachel Naomi Remen
“The secret to waking up is unscrambling the word earth.” —anonymous
“I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.” ―Rachel Held Evans
“What a comfort to know that God is a poet.” ―Rachel Held Evans
“Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world.” —Johannes Kepler
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” —John Keating (Robin Williams in Dead Poet Society)
“You are the Ground of all being the Well-Spring of time Womb of the earth the Seed-Force of stars. And so at the opening of this day we wait not for blessings from afar but for You the very Soil of our soul the early Freshness of morning the first Breath of day.” —John Philip Newell
“Be wary of any influence in your environment that dismisses or judges your enthusiasm. Without it, you would become anaesthetized to life itself. Anyone who demands this smallness of you is in danger themselves and may have contracted this insidious, deadening monotone. Enthusiasm is the vitality of spirit, expressing itself through us, and its grace in our voice should be welcomed and cherished. The word originates in the early 17th century, from the Greek enthousiasmos meaning ‘possessed by god.’ Now, more than ever, the world needs your enlargement, your weirdness, your fiery crescendos of rebellion from boring.” —Toko-pa Turner
“Grief is normal. It’s not like you’ll have a life someday with no grief. Life is all about loss, but grief is the medicine for that loss. Grief is not your problem. Grief is not the sorrow. Grief is the medicine. The people that have grief cultural awareness are always turning all of their losses into beauty in order to make more life instead of just trying to get through it and then forget about it.” —Martin Prechtel
“The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn.” —Bayard Rustin
“My turn shall also come: I sense the spreading of a wing.” —Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet and essayist
“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” ―Washington Irving
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” —Louise Erdrich
” The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.” —Alexandra K. Trenfor
I’m not sure where this one came from. My brain is a little fried from a day of really hard work. Sometimes that’s when it’s easier to unhitch the brain’s horse and let it run free to do what it wants.
Gratitude List: 1. Finishing a long, hard procrastinated project, almost on time. 2. A day of being silent and alone 3. Lemon poppyseed muffin 4. An altar with a pathway of shining stones 5. The prospect of sleep: soon, soon, soon May we walk in Beauty!
“People have said to me, ‘You’re so courageous. Aren’t you ever afraid?’ I laugh because it’s not possible to be courageous if you’re not afraid. Courage doesn’t happen without fear; it happens in spite of fear. The word courage derives from ‘coeur’, the French for ‘heart.’ True courage happens only when we face our fear and choose to act anyway, out of love.” —Julia Butterfly Hill
“Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?” —Wendell Berry
“Every country should have a Ministry of Peace” —Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire
“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.” —Tom Robbins
“I never want to lose the story-loving child in me. A story that meant one thing to me when I was forty may mean something quite different to me today.” —Madeleine L’Engle
“Imagine the tiny percentage of your body that is directly involved in reading this sentence. Now, consider the oversized percentage this conscious part of you occupies in your concept of yourself. So? What does this discrepancy mean? Is our “who” different from our “what”?” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist
“Where you ache to be recognized, allow yourself to be seen.” —Toko-pa Turner
Mockingbird Chronicles 