Thank you

"It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour."
-from Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water looking out

in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

in a culture up to its chin in shame

living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the back door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks that use us we are saying thank you

with the crooks in the office with the rich and fashionable

unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

our lost feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us like the earth

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

we are saying thank you and waving

dark though it is

 

-W.S. Merwin

What I have learned so far

What I Have Learned So Far

Mary Oliver

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, 

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

Delivering sugar cookies  

to the neighbors

St. Lucia Day

December 13, 2013

Child of God

From Henri Nouwen's The Inner Voice of Love

Do not discount what you have already accomplished. You have made important steps toward the freedom you are searching for. You have decided to dedicate yourself completely to God, to make Jesus the center of your life, and to be fashioned into an instrument of God's grace. Yes, you still experience your inner dividedness, your need for approval and acclaim. But you see that you have made important choices that show where you want to go.

You can look at your life as a large cone that becomes narrower the deeper you go. There are many doors in that cone that give you chances to leave the journey. But you have been closing these doors one after the other, making yourself go deeper and deeper into your center. You know that Jesus is waiting for you at the end, just as you know that he is guiding you as you move in that direction. Every time you close another door- be it the door of immediate satisfaction, the door of distracting entertainment, the door of busyness, the door of guilt and worry, or the door of self-rejection- you commit yourself to go deeper into your heart and thus deeper into the heart of God.

This is a movement toward full incarnation. It leads you to become what you already are- a child of God; it lets you embody more and more the truth of your being; it makes you claim the God within you. You are tempted to think that you are nobody in the spiritual life and that your friends are far beyond you on the journey. But this is a mistake.

You must trust the depth of God's presence in you and live from there. This is the way to keep moving toward full incarnation.

Mumma's Tree Farm

November 29, 2013

The grace of the world

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Annual trip to Stone's Apple Orchard

September 2013

One tiny girl fell off the hay rack while we were moving; one crazed mother jumped after

As of yesterday evening, all apples have finally been made into yummy sauce (sauce made especially delicious when Jared snuck in some ground cloves)

Been relishing each of these amazing "second summer" days with weekly field trips, arguing to myself that experiencing beauty and revering nature supercedes "schooling"

Tomorrow I leave for the annual St. Moses the Black conference being held in Kansas City, MO. Pretty excited for a six-hour car ride without kids.

Peaceful weekend.