Friday Fish

I have a couple of enticing book reviews, a poem and a song all caught in the net this morning to share with you...

Have a great weekend !

"When Angels Are Born is an honest and heartfelt invocation, a calling out to the sacred that is so desperately needed today “in a world that undervalues such an intimacy of spirit.” It is also a spiritual journey where we are continually aroused from our sleep and brought to think and to feel our common human situation. We are encouraged gently to “pay attention” and to “welcome the embrace | of heaven found in a single moment, between breathing in and out.”

 Ron Starbuck’s psalms, or sacred songs and prose easily guides us onto the path of many contemplative traditions and mystics like Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton. And in the light of those traditions, we are asked to travel further than the known, to “empty out our small separate selves and to recognize the truth of who we really are–”to become a sacrament of seeing.”

There are no clear cut answers offered to the great metaphysical questions but rather a deepening of those questions. He speaks directly into the heart of each of us, as though drawing from an ancient source, giving us voice to our deepest and most powerful intuitions and longings. 

The question of what does it really mean to be alive is echoed throughout the book and his penetrating verse assures us that the world is filled with the Absolute and that we need only to listen and discover for ourselves that we are not separate–that we are all part of something much larger.

 Even difficult spiritual concepts like compassion, emptiness, and rebirth are distilled down to their essence and made accessible in a language easily understood by the heart. In the poem “Death,” for example, Ron Starbuck says:

Look at someone you love today
For one minute,
As if you saw them
for the first time.

When Angels Are Born is a gift. It is a wonderful book that can be read again and again. It serves to remind us to ask what is being given to us in each moment. Ron Starbuck’s poetry encourages us to try to see the world through fresh eyes, and to open ourselves up to gratitude for this life, or as he so eloquently puts it: “to give birth to our own angels in the world every day.”

 Click here to read the complete review of the book 

The Lord is found in unexpected places, and there are some quirky tales recorded in Joy Williams’s new book, “99 Stories of God”

 Click here for a review of Joy Williams Book in the Huffington Post

This is one of the reviews from an Amazon reader
"This is her first collection in nearly a decade and it is well worth the wait. God is one of the characters here; Kafka, too; a hermit; a housekeeper. There are many more. The Lord of 99 Stories is often befuddled by his creation, which includes such normal American venues as the mall. The Lord goes through a lot of trouble when trying to adopt a turtle. The Lord hangs out with wolves in their den. The Lord also has a tricky time of it with a pharmacist. The Lord's world--the world of Joy Williams--is mysterious and suffused with yearning for a divine place that turns out to be remarkably like this place. What else is there? she seems to say. I doubt I'll read a better collection of stories this year"

 Click here for some more reviews from Amazon and some more samples

Below are stories 5, 6 and 7

5
At some point, Kafka became a vegetarian.
Afterwards, visiting an aquarium in Berlin, he spoke to the fish through the glass.
“Now at last I can look at you in peace, I don’t eat you anymore.”
Nevertheless
6
You know that dream of Tolstoy’s where he’s in some sort of bed contraption suspended between the abyss below and the abyss above? You know that one? Well, I gave it to him, the Lord said.
See That You Remember
7
Franz Kafka once called his writing a form of prayer.
He also reprimanded the long-suffering Felice Bauer in a letter: “I did not say that writing ought to make everything clearer, but instead makes everything worse; what I said was that writing makes everything clearer and worse.”

He frequently fretted that he was not a human being and that what he bore on his body was not a human head. Once he dreamt that as he lay in bed, he began to jump out the open window continuously at quarter-hour intervals.

“Then trains came and one after another they ran over my body, outstretched on the tracks, deepening and widening the two cuts in my neck and legs.”

I didn’t give him that one, the Lord said.

Not His Best
 

A Heliotropic Prayer Song

To the little sapling
growing in a crack
on the curb between
slabs of concrete,

maddening the nihilists
around it wondering
about the possibility
of an empty whole:

Whereof do you find nourishment?
I suspect that plants were never
as lonely as those of us who are
ambulatory would like to believe,

moving or not moving
being less important
than rootedness,
than having a home,

even when it’s paved over
and its only hope
is to live to see
the sun again.

Juan Pablo Laso

 Gladys Knight Friendship Train
 performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert
 in Oslo Norway December 11 2005.

Friday Fish

 This predates the recent warnings of the late Cardinal Martini on the Catholic church being 200 years out of date.......

From a letter to Pope John XXIII, August 1962, as quoted in Alberigo and Komonchak, The History of Vatican II, Volume I.

 —from Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger, Archbishop of Montréal

Several schemata consider the Church too much as an institution under siege which the Council must defend; they do not see in it enough the radiant depositary of the salvation to be shared.

 In them the Church has the aspect of an institution more juridical than missionary. 

They don’t show the courage to turn frankly to the present world, toward its needs, toward its new and legitimate demands. 

They seem to believe, instead, that it will be enough to repeat, with more insistence but without deepening the doctrine, formulas which already the world no longer can understand. 

They seem to believe that the losses of faith, the deterioration of morality, the failures of the apostolate have no other causes than the inattention of men or the malice of the times;

 they do not ask if the obsolete character of certain forms of the Church’s thought and action also play some role in it.

Taken from Source Concilaria.

Home Page here

 

                                                               Prayers from Iona Books

Update Friday Fish

 Image source

It's a while since I did a Friday fish post so here are a few web links worthy of your attention caught in my net browsing this week, many of which deal with the common theme of learning. 

( I have added the beautiful and timeless song Teach Your Children Well since doing the original post.)

Yesterday's post featured a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, which several enjoyed.

She has become a favourite of mine too and this link takes you to more of her work.

The link above takes you to a full transcript of the PBS video below. 
What an inspiring woman !!

 

                       Watch Poet Nye: 'Telling a Story Helped Us Figure Out Who We Were' on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

 You can watch her read more of her work on the Art Beat page at NewsHour.PBS.org.

Also this week I was delighted to discover a facebook page by Parker J. Palmer, another fantastic writer. For anyone who missed it, the link is on my facebook page and here.

The end of August sees the beginning of a new term at school for many so there are a few posts that deal with this.

A great  post on remembering his first day at school and the influence teachers made throughout his life from Fr. Austin Fleming  can be read here at  A Concord Pastor Comments.


Parker Palmer's facebook site also has praise for teachers. Although it focuses on America, the content transfers well to the UK and other countries too.

This is his post..

"LET US NOW PRAISE TEACHERS: It's August, and K-12 teachers are gearing up for the start of a new school year. These folks are at the top of my list of "culture heroes." Five-plus days a week, often under adverse conditions, they help our children find their way into a challenging future.

For many teachers, caring about students goes far beyond good lessons, long hours, and endless patience. Among other things, they buy needed supplies that schools can't afford, and provide breakfast food for kids who come to school hungry. (From my Almanac of Intolerable American Facts: at least 20% of our school-age children live at risk of hunger, in "food insecure" households.)

But it's not only social conditions that make growing up a challenge. There's also the child's inner life, something we adults often forget about, even though we were once young—in the last century!

Here's a Billy Collins poem that reminds us of what kids sometimes feel, and why they need "soft eyes" from all of us. Reading it, I'm filled with gratitude for all the teachers who care for our kids with compassion as well as competence."
 

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Billy Collins

If you haven't seen this video yet it should bring a spring in your step . 

It underscores how important early life experiences are in nurturing and fostering love of music.

It is a great example of how joyful learning can and should be.

It also tells us something important about how simple acts of parental care and attention bring happiness and are so formative in creating bonds with others.

It serves as a reminder that as we get older we need to take time to reconnect to that childlike carefree exuberance in each others presence.




Click here for a link to a veritable feast  of yet more excellent stuff from Parker.J. Palmer at the USA Centre For Courage and Renewal. 

This extract by Parker Palmer below is taken from his facebook page and describes the purpose of the Centre. 

"As founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal, I take deep pride in the way this small non-profit organization provides support for people in the serving professions.

Since 1997—working through a network that now numbers nearly 200 facilitators in 35 states and 50 cities—the Center has offered programs to help teachers, physicians, clergy and others “rejoin soul and role,” renewing their passion for their work, reclaiming its basic values and deepening their service to others."

 Under the leadership of my good friends Terry Chadsey, Marcy Jackson and Rick Jackson, the Center's staff has done a remarkable job of putting wheels on some of the things I wrote about in "The Courage to Teach," "A Hidden Wholeness," "Let Your Life Speak," and "Healing the Heart of Democracy."

More than 45,000 people have been directly touched by Courage & Renewal programs and retreats to date.

At age 73, it's clear to me that, of all the things I've put my hand to, the Center's work is the most important. That's why I've decided to give this work most of my energies in the years ahead.

If you already know about this work—as tens of thousands of people do—I hope you will want to deepen your participation in it. If you are new to this work, I hope you will want to learn more about it.

I hope, too, that you will want to join me, the Center’s board, staff and friends, in helping to secure and expand the Center's important contribution to the growing movement to reclaim integrity and courage in professional and public life."

I wish we had a similar programme in the UK.

Some may remember this great song from Crosby and Nash.

Teach your Children Well 

Finally, one of my favourite quotes from Mark Twain that I often gave students when I was a lecturer.

Friday Fish

Image sources Pinterest here

Caught in the net this week:

Nuns on The Bus in the USA. Read a great post on it here.

Related article :The Vatican vs. the Rebel Nuns: A Summit in the Holy See

Phyllis Zagano from NCR on internal division in the Catholic church asks Can We All Get Along ? from here

The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), formerly known as the Inquisition, has issued a "notification" against Sr. Margaret Farley's book, Just Love. It is intriguing how the book's back cover recommendations comments here are at odds with the CDF view.

An article from Religion Dispatches well worth a read from here

and A great article on this from here with supportive statements.

From Commonweal magazine’s Grant Gallicho, who posted the following message on Twitter

“The Vatican-condemned book by Sr. Margaret Farley has reached 138 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Up from 147,982 just a few hours ago.”

According to another one of his tweets, the book eventually reached the No.21 position !!

In a blog post on the dotCommonweal blog, Michael Peppard, a professor of early Christianity, offers a good chronology of the investigation of Sister Farley’s work and also a critique of the Vatican’s comments on it.  His conclusion:

“If even the Pope — whose every word and move is watched globally — is permitted to step out of his office and write as a spiritual seeker and theologian, what about a woman religious with a Ph.D. and forty years’ experience in the classroom? The Pope draws from contemporary philosophical currents (historical criticism derived from an Enlightenment consciousness) and contemporary experience (of anti-Semitism and its horrific effects) in the course of his presentation of Jesus. Just as with the Pope’s books on Jesus, attentive readers of Sr. Farley’s book on ethics know that she clearly states when she is speaking her own opinion about the principles of just relationships. It’s hard to imagine how Catholic readers would be in danger of mistaking her assessments for those of the Catechism.

And after over forty years as a professor at a prominent seminary, Sr. Farley knows that she is not giving the faithful questions that they don’t already have.  The faithful know what the Catechism says, and if we don’t, it’s easy to find out.  But the faithful also have close, personal experiences with faithful Christians who, for example: divorced a spouse because the relationship was unjust and causing grave harm; or lived in a relationship of vastly unequal power and wanted to end it but couldn’t; or were raised from childhood to be men or women of stalwart faith and morality by their faithful parents, who happened to be of the same sex. Sr. Farley’s book results from years of study and witness to the questions raised by men and women who tried to live their Christian lives with faithfulness and righteousness.”

On America magazine’s In All Things blog, Fr. James Martin, SJ, writes the following praise of Sister Farley in his most recent post:

“Margaret Farley is an immensely well respected theologian and scholar, and is a revered mentor for many Catholic theologians.  It would be difficult to overstate her influence in the field of sexual ethics, or the esteem in which she is held by her colleagues.  With this stinging critique, the Vatican has again signaled its concern about theologians writing about sexual morality. This Notification will certainly sadden Sister Margaret’s many colleagues, her generations of students, and those many Catholics who have profited by her decades of reflection on the faith.  It will also, inevitably, raise strong emotions among those who already feel buffeted by the Vatican’s Apostolic Visitation of Catholic sisters in the US, and its intervention into the LCWR.”

Eugene Cullen Kennedy from NCR compares the way the Vatican have dealt with SSPX and  the US Nuns here and finds certain deficiencies. 

He says: "So the men of SSPX who still reject a general council of the church and have switched sides of the bargaining table with the pope will let him know whether his latest proposal to create a niche of their own in the church is acceptable or not. The women religious who have given their lives to implement the pastoral vision of Vatican II are told, in effect, to shape up or ship out."

On LGBT issues this article discusses a new documentary film depicting a Jesuit priest's struggle for LGBT rights.

"Taking a Chance on God," by Irish-born filmmaker Brendan Fay who the article says "reminds us that not only is this struggle relatively new in church history, but the momentum behind the movement began with one courageous priest and his groundbreaking book."

 

 
Filmmaker Brendan Fay and John McNeill
Source

 The film offers a portrait of John McNeill, the Jesuit priest who was silenced in 1977 for his book The Church and the Homosexual and, nine years later, was expelled from his order for refusing to stay silent in his ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics. 

The film had its New York City premiere last weekend as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the New York chapter of Dignity USA, a community McNeill helped found. The film includes a number of insightful interviews from fellow priest activist Dan McCarthy, theologian Mary Hunt, openly gay priest Bernard Lynch, gay rights activist Ginny Appuzzo, and the late activist Jesuit Fr. Robert Carter."

Human rights is very much on the agenda this week and this article on the expulsion of Jesuit priest Fr. Paolo dall'Oglio from Syria is a sober reminder of how easy it is for us to take for granted our own liberty to speak out against injustice. Another article here








Fr Paolo dall'Oglio source

Interesting to see that Godzdogz Blog are planning to do a new summer series of postings on Women in The Old Testament.

Friday Fish

A few items caught in the net this week

 

Image source 

One of several versions of the painting "The Scream". The National Gallery, Oslo, Norway. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was listening to the radio yesterday about the sale of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch's painting, "The Scream" for a record amount of almost $120 million.

 About 'The Scream', Munch wrote: "I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."


More to Munch here: A Life Reflected in Paintings

The presenter mentioned that much has been written about Munch being bipolar or a demented melancholic but there is now a suggestion that he he might have been a synaesthetic.

Synaesthesia itself is a rare and unusual condition thought to affect less than 1% of the population. 

It can takes many different forms - some people may "see sounds", in that certain sounds trigger them to see particular colours. 

Others might experience colours while reading those words in simple black text.

But according to Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, we are all "synaesthetes" up to a point. 

Related articles

You can read more here

There are several  famous people with synaesthesia.  Click here for a few

Edvard Munch - Geschrei - The Scream - 1895 - dithered color, close-up (Photo credit: Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL))

• This is another article on the synaesthetic sense 

• and this fascinating one on the Kalahari bushmen's synaesthesia

• Munch's The Scream rivals even the Mona Lisa - Telegraph.co.uk (telegraph.co.uk)
• Edvard Munch: A Life Reflected In Paintings (webpronews.com)
• What a scream! (rakstagemom.wordpress.com)

•  Interesting article here on artists with synasthesia

Whatever the obscene price for the painting it is clear that the subject matter of Munch' painting resonates as a siren in a world of turmoil. We are confronted with so many humanitarian crises and a world sadly so often to be found one full of screams.

 Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's senior crisis adviser, was in Syria for 10 days during the second half of April. Rovera has worked at Amnesty International for 20 years and has extensive experience of working in conflict zones, including Libya, South Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire and Gaza.

 Here she reports some of the first-hand accounts of the brutal crackdown by the Syrian regime against its people.

and here.

This morning on the radio featured a moving interview with one of the "White Widows of Italy", whose husbands killed themselves in recession.The women staged a recent march in Bologna to draw attention to plight of families hit by unemployment and bankruptcy; 



Man begs alongside designer shops on streets of Milan





Sadly these stories could be replicated throughout other Eurozone crisis ridden countries and wider afield. 


Read more here  and here ,an article from one widow whose husband is one of more than 70 people who have taken their lives this year because of Italy's economic crises.

Other countries in crisis like Sudan, Bahrain and the Middle East cry out in fear and against injustice. 

In April this year, the government of the predominantly Muslim nation of Sudan in the North, headed by Al- Bashir  stripped its 500,000 to 700,000 Christians of citizenship and  put them on notice that they had one week to leave the country.  
The government of Sudan declared that all whose "parents, grandparents or great grandparents born in the world's youngest newly created country of South Sudan or who belong to any southern ethnic group" are no longer citizens of Sudan and must leave by April 8.
Sudan has always been a borderland between Arab and black African, between slavemaster and slave and increasingly, between Muslim and Christian.  During the decades-long jihad by the Sudan between the early 1980s and today against the black Africans to the east in Darfur and in the south, conservative estimates put the death toll at over 2 million.  Al-Bashir has already been indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide.
The United Nations has given Sudan and South Sudan a two week deadline to stop fighting. The escalating  conflict is about the oil fields on the borders

While most of the oil is in South Sudan, it's pumped though pipes in North Sudan to be sold. North Sudan wants more money from the South to use the pipes and wants more of the oil fields.

Of course it is the ordinary people caught up in this who have become refugees.

Read the Washington Post story this week on how the Sudanese conflict has created A Land of The Lost.

My earlier post this week on clerical sex abuse in Ireland showed the agonised cri de coeur from the heart of my homeland in graphic terms. 

I recommend this thought provoking article which deals with the church's response to sexual abuse of children in wider terms.There are no easy answers to any of this and we certainly need prayer.

For this First Friday of the month of May, Fr Austin at A Concord Pastor Comments has a litany of prayers here.

These will be continued every Friday and don't forget to check out his Praying 10 Minutes Today series here .

Not a day goes by without some horror unfolding in some part of the world that makes it very hard to pray "Be still and know that I am God and yet this Sunday's Gospel of the true vine confirms that message from Christ who says "Abide in Me; without Me you can do nothing."

Abide - a word that says stay with Christ, be close and rest within the heart of a God of infinite love and compassion, when all the world around us is in the grips of conflict and chaos.

In my inbox today From Inward/Outward

The Unity of God

Julian of Norwich

God wants to be thought of as our Lover.
I must see myself so bound in love
as if everything that has been done
has been done for me.

That is to say, the Love of God makes such a unity
in us that when we see this unity
no one is able to separate oneself
from another.

 In a way The Scream by Munch is this prayer too.
 It is a prayer of reality that acknowledges how far our world is from God when we act to  separate ourselves from one another.

Finally, as Fr James Martin says in this video to thank Nuns from the LWCR

 "Gratitude is Always in Season."

 

UPDATE Friday Fish

 Diving With Barracuda Image source

A quick dive around some hot topics and church related issues in the news...

 A controversial extreme right-wing splinter group of Catholic traditionalists prepare to be taken back into the fold.

Stories from various viewpoints. 

These developments are cause for concern  !! 


SSPX


The Lefebvrite schism may be nearing an end... (ncronline.org)

This article from Atlantic magazine which begins :
 "If you're looking for a more nuanced and detailed take on the Vatican's decision to lift the excommunication of four Society of Saint Pius X bishops than, say, the New York Times provides, I recommend Amy Welborn's roundup and analysis.

**********NEW An article in Religion Dispatches by Anthea Butler here

and a disturbing and trenchant analysis of the group in question from here.

 A British reporter, Sonia Gable, observed here in January 2012, “further connections being built among the elite of British fascism, where far-right Catholics associated with the Society of St Pius X are increasingly active,” and the danger that the British far right “might draw strength from the assiduous networking of London’s Catholic fundamentalists.”

and general report on rise in right wing in Europe here 

**********************************************************
Meanwhile in The USA

 A report on a survey of Hispanic Catholic views on Homosexuality


The congregation at Seattle’s Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church gave the Rev. Tim Clark a standing ovation Sunday when he announced that the parish would not gather signatures for a referendum to repeal same-sex marriage.
  More here

and this young man, Matthew Vines speaks on the theological debate regarding the Bible and the role of gay Christians in the church. Delivered at College Hill United Methodist Church in Wichita, Kansas on March 8, 2012. Transcript: http://matthewvines.tumblr.com

***********************************************************

This one is from the USA but has  potentially wider reverberations:-

LCWR

A report here in America Magazine from Fr. James Martin S.J, on the 

the response to the Vatican's investigation of women's religious congregations in the United States and of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious, the main organizing body of women's religious congregations in the USA. The USCCB has announced the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith beginning of a reform of the LCWR which includes link to the CDF's "Assessment."  The main areas of concern were (a) the LCWR's assemblies and conferences, (b) "policies of "corporate dissent" and (c) "radical feminism." 

Sister Joan Chittister and Sister Simone Campbell response here

• Vatican Action Against U.S. Nuns; New Ways Ministry's Response (newwaysministryblog.wordpress.com)
• VATICAN NUN CRACKDOWN: Rome Says U.S. Nuns Don't Adhere to Church Teachings (blippitt.com)  
•  
• and a fine 2009 article from Commonweal by a religious sister of 30 years standing. 

***********************************************

UPDATE. Please read this excellent post from Claire at a Seat At The Table Blog

**********************************************************

Meanwhile In Ireland

Vatican moves against turbulent Irish priest... (sluggerotoole.com) 

the dispatch to a monastery for an Irish priest who has voiced dissent 

• Hie thee to a Monastery!" - Rome's Answer to Clerical Dissent (kiwianglo.wordpress.com)

Another survey of Irish Catholics here

UPDATE Sacred Space 102fm article here When Peter and Paul disagree

****************************************************************************

Meanwhile in the UK 

A report here on Radio 4 programme

 about the “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!” advertising which Anglican Mainstream and Core Issues Trust had planned for London buses. Lynda Rose from Mainstream and Mike Davidson from Core Issues had been invited to present the conservative evangelical argument. At the end of the discussion Revd Colin
 The Revd Colin Coward, Director of Changing Attitude, explains why
 felt more upset than he has ever felt at the end of an interview.

The Anglican Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan said the Church would not be able to ignore the new legislation on civil marriage proposed by the Government, despite the fact that the legislation would not allow gay couples to marry in church. He called on the Church to discuss how it would respond.He said, “If the legislation to allow civil marriage is passed, I cannot see how we as a church, will be able to ignore the legality of the status of such partnerships and we ought not to want to do so.“The question then as now is, will the church protect and support pastorally, faithful, stable, lifelong relationships of whatever kind in order to encourage human values such as love and fidelity and recognise the need in Christian people for some public religious support for these…" 

Read more in this post on the UK situation from here

****************************************************************

I'll have to resort to some poetry.

Lines Written In Early Spring

 
I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.









Image source above

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths












Image source for blue periwinkle

                 


And ’tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:–
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.











Image source

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

William Wordsworth

Psalm

by Richard Wilbur 

Give thanks for all things

On the plucked lute, and likewise

The harp of ten strings.

Have the lifted horn

Greatly blare, and pronounce it

Good to have been born.

Lend the breath of life

To the stops of the sweet flute

Or capering fife,

And tell the deep drum

To make, at the right juncture,

Pandemonium.

Image source

Then, in grave relief,

Praise too our sorrows on the

Cello of shared grief.

 Verdran Smajlović playing in Sarajevo.Wikimedia Commons.

More info here

For One who Holds Power

May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a
vocation,

Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to
serve.

As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its
wings,

May your perspective be larger than the view from
the foothills.

When the way is flat and dull in times of gray
endurance,

May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.

When thirst burns in times of drought,
May you be blessed to find the wells.

May you have the wisdom to read time clearly
And know when the seed of change will flourish.

In your heart may there be a sanctuary
For the stillness where clarity is born.

May your work be infused with passion and creativity
And have the wisdom to balance compassion and
challenge.

May your soul find the graciousness
To rise above the fester of small mediocrities.

May your power never become a shell
Wherein your heart would silently atrophy.

May you welcome your own vulnerability
As the ground where healing and truth join.

May integrity of soul be your first ideal.
The source that will guide and bless your work.

John O 'Donohue

          Christ on Cold Stone source