The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it.
Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929 – 2018, American Author
Every stage of our lives involves some new form of waiting....Waiting presents an enormous challenge. We are impatient, I-can-fix-it kinds of people . . . but not all situations can be fixed. We assume that everything in life can be made better by taking action, but sometimes it just isn’t so…Waiting is an important guest to honor in the guest house of our humanity. If we consciously allow waiting to be our teacher, we can accommodate waiting more peacefully.
Holly W. Whitcomb, The Seven Spiritual Gifts of Waiting
After the year that we have had, the last day according to the Christian Calendar. Advent starts this evening. A welcome time of renewal and nourishment for our tired bones…
Poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes indeed.
Mary Oliver, Poetry Handbook
The wide streams go their way,
The pond lapses back into a glassy silence.
The cause of God in me — has it gone?
Do these bones live? Can I live with these bones?
Theodore Roethke, American poet 1908 – 1963, What Can I Tell My Bones? (extract)
This is a poem for someone
who is juggling her life.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
It needs repeating
over and over
to catch her attention
over and over,
as someone who is juggling her life
finds it difficult to hear.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
Let it all fall sometimes.
Rose Cook, Poem for someone who is juggling her life
So I read….Armenians, I read, salt their newborn babies. I check somewhere else: so did the Jews at the time of the prophets. They washed a baby in water, salted him, and wrapped him in cloths. When God promised to Aaron and all the Levites all the offerings Israel made to God, the firstfruits and the firstling livestock, “all the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine,” he said of this promise, “It is a covenant of salt forever.” In the Roman church baptism, the priest places salt in the infant’s mouth.
I salt my breakfast eggs. All day long I feel created.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
What saves a person is to take a step.
Then another step.
C.S. Lewis
