The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.
Galway Kinnell, Saint Francis and the Sow
St Finbarr’s Oratory, Gougane Barra, Co. Cork.
Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day
We can make our minds so like still water
that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images,
and so live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.
W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight
The First Sunday of Lent, a period of reflection and simplification of outside stimuli.
Anything you want to ask a teacher,
ask yourself,
and wait for the answer in silence
Byron Katie
Another Saturday, another piece from Mary Oliver
The dog, the donkey, surely they know they are alive. Who would argue otherwise? But now, after years of consideration, I am getting beyond that. What about the sunflowers? What about The tulips, and the pines? Listen, all you have to do is start and There?ll be no stopping. What about mountains? What about water Slipping over rocks? And speaking of stones, what about The little ones you can Hold in your hands, their heartbeats So secret, so hidden it may take years Before, finally, you hear them?
Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems
All things therefore are charged with love, are charged with God and if we knew how to touch them give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Letters
A nice poem for a rainy Saturday.
Her capacity to see wonder in nature, and in life, no matter what the weather, was extraordinary
Last night
the rain spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves at the moment,
at which moment
my right hand was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain—
imagine! imagine!
the wild and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
Mary Oliver, Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning
John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space Between Us
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