Poem: Naomi Shihab Nye from "Kindness,"

 Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness...

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Photo: Italian Air Fresheners

 

Poem: Rainer Maria Rilke from “Gravity’s Law”

How surely gravity’s law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing— each stone, blossom, child— is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees…

 

Photo: Ignatius of Loyola

 

Prayer: Padraig O’Tuama from "A Liturgy of the Morning"

 ... God said, 'There will be dreams from the night that will need the light of the morning.’ And so God put wisdom in the early hours.

... God said: 'Let there be a certain kind of light that can only be seen in the morning.’ And God created gold, and dew, and horizons, and hills in the distance, and faces that look different in the light of the morning, and things that look different in the light of the morning...
And God said that it was Good.

Spirituality: Amish Roots by John A. Hostetler

I was invited to a barn raising near Wooster, Ohio. A tornado had leveled 4 barns and acres of prime Amish timber. In just three weeks the downed trees were sawn into girders, posts and beams and the 4 barns rebuilt and filled with livestock donated by neighbors to replace those killed in the storm. I watched the raising of the last barn in open-mouthed awe. Some 400 Amish men and boys, acting and reacting like a hive of bees in absolute harmony of cooperation, started at sunrise with only a foundation and floor and by noon, BY NOON, had the huge edifice far enough along that you could put hay in it -- a vast work, born of the spirit. 

Photo: Pistachio Milkshake Candle

 

Prayer: from from Molchanie: The Silence of God, by Catherine de Hueck Doherty

Those whom God calls into silence will enter a vortex which will shatter them into little pieces. Looking here and there you will see fragments of a human being. You will behold you own fragmentation and wonder why you do not die. I do not know why. God knows. But in silence, God will gather together your fragments. And when you emerge from the sea of silence you will be thunder. And this thunder will pass beyond the galaxies as if you were a bird sent forth to preach the gospel to the whole universe ... People will not know where the thunder is coming from, but it will be coming from your heart. God has entered it through silence. Having put together your fragmented self, God now tells you to go on a pilgrimage to preach the gospel in a silence that is more powerful than any words you have ever spoken. For, silence is more powerful than any words, except one: the Word. It is by entering the Word that to some the gift of utter silence, and therefore complete speech, is given.

Photo: Harbor views

 

Prayer: 12th century poem quoted by Francis Weller in The Wild Edge of Sorrow

'Tis a fearful thing

To love
What death can touch.
To love, to hope to dream,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
Love,
But a holy thing
To love what death can touch.