{mostly on fiction, poetry, spirituality, biblical studies and theology}
Like two lovers who have become lost
In a winter blizzard
And find a cozy, empty hut
In the forest,
I now huddle everywhere
With the friend.
God and I have built an immense fire
Together.
We keep each other happy
And warm.
From: Hafiz, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems
If you think that the Truth can be known
From words,If you think that the Sun and the Ocean
Can pass through that tiny opening
Called the mouth,O someone should start laughing!
Someone should start wildly Laughing –
Now!
From ‘Someone Should Start Laughing’
Last night,
So many tears took flight because of Joy
That the sky got crowded and complained
When I discovered God hiding again in my heart
And I could not cease to celebrate.
From ‘Dance, Dervish Dance’
Both poems are from Hafiz, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy. Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky
Zadie Smith’s On Beauty did never quite engage me in the way that I had expected, but here are what for me were the book’s three highlights:
… poetry is the first mark of the truly civilized.
And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people.
It’s like he knows he’s blessed, but he doesn’t know where to put his gratitude because that makes him uncomfortable, because that would be dealing in transcendence – and we all know how he hates to do that. So by denying there are any gifts in the world, any essentially valuable things – that’s how he shortcircuits the gratitude question. If there are no gifts, then he doesn’t have to think about a God who might have given them. But that’s where joy is. I’m on my knees to God every day.
In the last quote it is the book’s male hero’s teenage son speaking and displaying far more wisdom than his father ever manages. There is such profound truth in the equation of gratitude and joy. Being grateful to God – that indeed is where true joy is.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.
From Christina Rossetti’s ‘A Christmas Carol’
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
Mary Oliver, Thirst
The sparrows are spinning
warmth into the winter world.Their delicate, clear chirps
bring with them a crisp joy,
making me not so afraid
of the howling wind.So, too, the friends of my heart.
Joyce Rupp, My Soul Feels Lean: Poems of Loss and Restoration
A poor life is this, if full of care
we have no time to stand or stare.
W. H. Davies, ‘Leisure’, as quoted by Clare Bryden in Third Way, June 2013.
Brief thoughts & quotes … 