Posts tagged ‘santa cruz’
Have We Come Far Enough to Find God?
It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem. In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for the sea, God ‘set bars and doors’ and said, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.’ But have we come even that far? Have we rowed out to the thick darkness, or are we all playing pinochle in the bottom of the boat?
- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Not exactly a rowboat . . . but room for pinochle
Finding God
In the early evening we see the stars begin to appear as the sun disappears over the horizon. The light of day gives way to the darkness of night. A stillness, a healing quiet comes over the landscape. It’s a moment when some other world makes itself known, a numinous presence beyond human understanding. We experience the vast realms of space overwhelming the limitations of our human minds. As the sky turns golden and the clouds reflect the blazing colors of evening, we participate for a moment in the forgiveness, the peace, the intimacy of things with each other.
- Thomas Berry, The Great Community of Earth
. . . the sky turns golden and the clouds reflect the blazing colors of evening . . .
Our World, Full of God’s Gifts
You have given me Your love, filling the world with Your gifts.
- Rabindranath Tagore, The Heart of God
Easter Friday – At the Edge
Today’s Easter Poem from Education for Justice is by the wonderful Irish poet John O’Donohue.
At the Edge
Sometimes, behind the lines
Of words giving voice to the blue wind
That blows across the amber fields
Of your years, whispering the hungers
Your dignity conceals, and the caves
Of loss opening along shores forgotten
By the ocean, you can of most hear the depth
Of white silence, rising to deny everything.
Source: Conamara Blues, by John O’Donohue.
New York: Harper Collins, 2001. p. 67
. . . words giving voice to the blue wind . . .
Easter Thursday- What to Remember When Waking
Today’s Easter Poem is by one of my favorite poets, David Whyte. I heard him recently at the Religious Education Congress in Southern California. It is wonderful just to hear him recite poetry. What a wonderful experience!
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
What to Remember When Waking
against a future sky?
Langley, WA: Many RiversPress, 1996. p. 26
A Psalm of Life
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
A Psalm of Life
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our heats, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead
Act,- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead.Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
a forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.Let us then be up and doing,
with a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.Source: “A Psalm of Life” from The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1893.
Am I to Lose You?
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Louisa Sarah Bevington.
Am I to Lose You?
‘Am I to lose you now?’ The words were light;
You spoke them, hardly seeking a reply,
That day I bid you quietly ‘Good-bye,’
And sought to hide my soul away from sight.
The question echoes, dear, through many a night, —
My question, not your own – most wistfully;
‘Am I to lose him?’ – asked my heart of me;
‘ Am I to lose him now, and lose him quite?’And only you can tell me. Do you care
That sometimes we in quietness should stand
As fellow-solitudes, hand firm in hand,
And thought with thought and hope with hope compare?
What is your answer? Mine must ever be,
‘I greatly need your friendship: leave it me.’Source: “Am I to Lose You?” from Poems, Lyrics and Sonnets, by L.S.
Bevington. London: Elliot Stock, 1882.
What to Remember When Waking
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by David Whyte.
What to Remember When Waking
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other,
more secret, movable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly
will make plans enough for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden
as a gift to others.To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents.
You were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.Now looking through
the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence
of everything that can be,
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely
white page on the waiting desk?Source: “What to Remember When Waking” from The House of Belonging by
David Whyte. Langley,WA: Many Rivers Press, 2004.
The Heavens Proclaim God’s Justice
To all my readers: I am trying a new Theme, one that changes color with each picture. I am happy to hear your comments regarding this change of theme . . . whether or not I should keep it or go back to the older one. Thanks! Pat
From today’s Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 97) we read:
Let all God’s angels worship God.
The heavens proclaim God’s justice
and all people see God’s glory.
All gods are prostrate before the Lord.Let all God’s angels worship God.
The heavens proclaim God’s justice
