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To Babies
May polar bears welcome you to northern Manitoba, their lumbering grace marking the ice. May there still be ice. May giant trees lean over your path in warm places, brush your brow. So many details now disappeared... tiny toads in deserts, fireflies. Where are the open window screens, whispers of breeze against a sleeping cheek? If we stop poking holes in soil, watching onions grow, what will we know? If we no longer learn cursive, will our hand muscles disintegrate? You blink, beginning to focus. Where will the lost loops of handwritten "g's" and "y's" go? We dream you will have so much to admire. Naomi Shihab Nye Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners
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"This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall Until the bitter weather passes. Try, as best you can, not to let The wire brush of doubt Scrape from your heart All sense of yourself And your hesitant light. If you remain generous, 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, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings  photo Kenneth Summers They are fighting again the war to end war,
and the ewe flock, bred in October, brings forth in March. This so far remains, this pain and renewal, whatever war is being fought. We go through the annual passage of birth and death, triumph and heartbreak, love and exasperation, mud, milk, mucus, and blood. Yet once more the young ewe stands with her lambs in the downright, the lambs well-suckled and dry. There is no happiness like this. The window again welcomes the light of lengthening days. The river in its old groove passes again beneath the opening leaves. In their brevity, between cold and shade, flowers again brighten the woods floor. This then may be the prayer without ceasing, this beauty and gratitude, this moment. - Wendell Berry, Given Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent
BY JOHN MILTON When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait.” TRIPPING OVER JOY
What is the difference Between your experience of Existence And that of a saint? The saint knows That the spiritual path Is a sublime chess game with God And that the Beloved Has just made such a Fantastic Move That the saint is now continually Tripping over Joy And bursting out in Laughter And saying, “I Surrender!” Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think You have a thousand serious moves. - Hafez,  Matthew Wong, "Starry Night" Two Poems for the new year:
The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things and Other Poems 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. _____ Within This Strange and Quickened Dust Madeleine L’Engle, The Ordering of Love O God, within this strange and quickened dust The beating heart controls the coursing blood In discipline that holds in check the flood But cannot stem corrosion and dark rust. In flesh’s solitude I count it blest That only you, my lord, can see my heart With passion’s darkness tearing it apart With storms of self, and tempests of unrest. But your love breaks through blackness, bursts with light; We separate ourselves, but you rebind In Dayspring all our fragments; body, mind, And spirit join, unite against the night. Healed by your love, corruption and decay Are turned, and whole, we greet the light of day  painting by Maude Lewis The Faces of Deer
by Mary Oliver When for too long I don't go deep enough into the woods to see them, they begin to enter my dreams. Yes, there they are, in the pinewoods of my inner life. I want to live a life full of modesty and praise. Each hoof of each animal makes the sign of a heart as it touches then lifts away from the ground. Unless you believe that heaven is very near, how will you find it? Their eyes are pools in which one would be content, on any summer afternoon, to swim away through the door of the world. Then, love and its blessing. Then: heaven. Small Kindnesses
By Danusha Laméris I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.” Aimless Love
by Billy Collins* This morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table. In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in the tailor’s window, and later for a bowl of broth, steam rising like smoke from a naval battle. This is the best kind of love, I thought, without recompense, without gifts, or unkind words, without suspicion, or silence on the telephone. The love of the chestnut, the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel. No lust, no slam of the door— the love of the miniature orange tree, the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower, the highway that cuts across Florida. No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor— just a twinge every now and then for the wren who had built her nest on a low branch overhanging the water and for the dead mouse, still dressed in its light brown suit. But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow. After I carried the mouse by the tail to a pile of leaves in the woods, I found myself standing at the bathroom sink gazing down affectionately at the soap, so patient and soluble, so at home in its pale green soap dish. I could feel myself falling again as I felt its turning in my wet hands and caught the scent of lavender and stone. *click on the name of "America's favorite poet" for a poetry master class. Softest of Mornings
by Mary Oliver Softest of mornings, hello. And what will you do today, I wonder, to my heart? And how much honey can the heart stand, I wonder, before it must break? This is trivial, or nothing: a snail climbing a trellis of leaves and the blue trumpets of flowers. No doubt clocks are ticking loudly all over the world. I don't hear them. The snail's pale horns extend and wave this way and that as her fingers-body shuffles forward, leaving behind the silvery path of her slime. Oh, softest of mornings, how shall I break this? How shall I move away from the snail, and the flowers? How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life? from Long Life: Essays and Other Writings (DaCapo Press) |
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"Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life--to know 'glory' when we see it."
~ Charlotte Mason
Virtual Life?
A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.
In Appreciation
Images are linked to their original posts where possible. They were chosen because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource as we explore the philosophy of Charlotte Mason together. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.
Images are linked to their original posts where possible. They were chosen because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource as we explore the philosophy of Charlotte Mason together. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.
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