Photo: By the Beach

 

Spirituality: Ethan Tapper in How to Love a Forest

I tried to explain how, through so many endings, this young forest is just beginning to deepen itself, just beginning to rediscover what it truly is: a natural community enriched by change and defined by scars… Over millennia, this forest has weathered storms, beyond counting, each time responding by becoming something new. This one will be no different…

I wonder how many times the world will change before we learn that the world IS change. I wonder how long we will struggle against change like a fish on a line, rail against it like children, build fortresses of sand around ourselves only to see the waves of change dissolve them again and again. I wonder how long it will take for us to learn that stability is vulnerability, that resilience is strength…

This is what it means to be resilient: to mourn a thousand endings and celebrate a thousand beginnings, to be as strong as steel and as soft as warm butter, to practice both resilience and acceptance, to cradle both life and death in our arms.

Photo: Time to Swim

 

Poem: Mary Oliver from "On the Beach" in SWAN

 On the beach, at dawn;

four small stones clearly
hugging each other.
How many kinds of love
might there be in the the world,
and how many formations might they make
And who am I ever
to imagine I could know
such a marvelous business?

Photo: I Arise Today

 

Poem: Maya Angelou, Still I Rise

 You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Prayer: from Community of Love by John Main

It is only in silence and through silence that we can interiorize what is beyond our comprehension and apprehend the power of a design larger than ourselves: it is the medium of transcendence.

Photo: Hydrangea

 

Song: Karl Jenkins, Now the Guns have Stopped

Silent, so silent now,
Now the guns have stopped.
I have survived all,
I who knew I would not.
But now you are not here.
I shall go home alone;
And must try to live life as before
And hide my grief.
For you, my dearest friend,
Who should be with me now,
Not cold too soon,
And in your grave,
Alone

Photo: Church Door