People like you and me, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
- Albert Einstein

“God speaks to each of us as we are made,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words, the numinous words,
we hear before we begin:
You, called forth by your senses
reach to the edge of your longing.

Become my body
grow like a fire behind things
so their shadows spread
and cover me completely

Let everything into you;
beauty and terror.
Keep going, remember
no feeling lasts forever

Don’t lose touch with me.
Nearby is the land they call life,
you will know it by its intensity.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Things to Think

Think in ways you've never thought before  

If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message

Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged: or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

— Robert Bly from Morning Poems

Orchestra music,
on a mild July evening -
lounging by the lake.

Scent of pond water,
clouds scudding across full moon,
flashes of fireflies.

Train whistles, fireworks,
lightning bugs, mimosa blooms;
late June's evenings.

The Sabbath

"The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world."
 ---Abraham Joshua Heschel

Solstice

Windows wide open,
listening to birds singing.
Making BLT's.

Early evening,
scent of flowers streaming in
wide, open windows.

Soles stained deep purple,
doves calling thru evening,
full June moon rises.

Through blossom flurries,
dropping from tree of heaven,
white butterfly floats.

Birds calling all day-
rain spattering mulberry,
running down gutters.

Song of Solomon 2:10-12

¹⁰ My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
    and come away,
¹¹ for behold, the winter is past;
    the rain is over and gone.
¹² The flowers appear on the earth,
    the time of singing^[a] has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.

Litany of Contradictory Things

Wheat and weeds:

       let them grow together…
Rich and poor, humble and haughty:
       let them grow together.
Those whose thinking is similar and contrary:
       let them grow together.
Those whose feelings are transparent or concealed:
       let them grow together.
Days of sparseness and days of plenty:
       let them grow together.
Winter, spring, summer, fall:
       let them grow together.
All the seasons of one’s life:
       let them grow together.
Joys and sorrow, laughter, tears:
       let them grow together.
Strength and weakness:
       let them grow together.
Doubt and faith:
       let them grow together.
Denial and commitment:
       let them grow together.
Preoccupation and freedom:
       let them grow together.
Virtue and vice:
       let them grow together.
Contemplation and action:
       let them grow together.
Giving and receiving:
       let them grow together.
The helpful and the helpless:
       let them grow together.
Wisdom of the East and West:
       let them grow together.
All contrarieties of the Spirit:
       let them grow together.
            –Excerpted and adapted from Michael Moynahan, SJ

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
Wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life—

What can anyone give you greater than now,
Starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
- William Stafford

Against the darkness
mountain laurel's blossoming
looming storm's stillness.

June's sweet lambent time -
long, languorous evenings -
slow, twilight hours.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

Where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

- Rumi