CowPi
 Journal

I watched a rosebud very long
    Brought on by dew and sun and shower,
    Waiting to see the perfect flower:
Then, when I thought it should be strong,
    It opened at the matin hour
And fell at evensong.

I watched a nest from day to day
    A green nest full of pleasant shade,
    Wherein three speckled eggs were laid:
But when they should have hatched in May,
    The two old birds had grown afraid
Or tired, and flew away.

Then in my wrath I broke the bough
    That I had tended so with care,
    Hoping that its scent should fill the air;
I crushed the eggs, not heeding how
    Their ancient promise had been fair :
I would have vengeance now.

But the dead branch spoke from the sod,
    And the eggs answered me again :
    Because we failed dost thou complain?
Is thy wrath just? And what if God,
    Who waiteth for thy fruits in vain,
Should also take the rod?

— Christina Georgina Rossetti, 1849

This moment, mortal as you or I,
was full of boundless, senseless,
silly joy, as if it knew
something we didn’t.

— Adam Zagajewski (via)

True love in every moment praises God.
Longing love brings a sorrow sweet to the pure.
Seeking love belongs to itself.
Understanding love gives itself equally to all.
Enlightened love is mingled with the sadness of the world.
But selfless love bears an effortless fruit,
    working so quietly even the body cannot say
    how it comes and goes.

— Mechthild of Magdeburg

Do you still get homesick?
Do you dare let yourself feel that ache,
That deep emptiness of longing, a hole of nothingness?
Or do you cover it up,
With half promises, with misdirected hopes, with distractions?
Do you still long for wholeness,
Completeness, oneness, with another?
Do you still hunger?
Do you still long for God, for heaven, for home?

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you,
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!
When someone deeply listens to you,
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

— John Fox, from Finding What You Didn’t Lose (via)

You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or in the silence after lightning before it says
its names - and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles - you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head—
that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.

— William Stafford

I recently rediscovered a rare moment of inspired creativity I had left as a comment to this article back in March, 2008, “No Resistance is Futile”.

The form of haiku—

Like banks of a river flows
Creativity

The point of the article, and the website too, is that limitations, restrictions, or boundaries narrows ones focus and fosters creativity. One often struggles and complains about boundaries and limitations, but it is this very struggle that develops the creative muscle needed to flourish within those walls. (An analogy seems to apply to prayer too.)

This reminds me of Twitter. A limitation of only 140 characters places a steep premium on the economy of words to convey an idea or to paint an image. People manage okay, but good story telling, or even poetry, is rare. I try.

Say “death” and the whole room freezes—
even the couches stop moving,
even the lamps.
Like a squirrel suddenly aware it is being looked at.

Say the word continuously,
and things begin to go forward.
Your life takes on
the jerky texture of an old film strip.

Continue saying it, hold it moment after moment inside the mouth,
it becomes another syllable.
A shopping mall swirls around the corpse of a beetle.

Death is voracious, it swallows all the living.
Life is voracious, it swallows all the dead.
neither is ever satisfied, neither is ever filled,
each swallows and swallows the world.

The grip of life is as strong as the grip of death.

(but the vanished, the vanished beloved, o where?)

— Jane Hirshfield

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seems.

Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice—no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?)
girdled with the lightening.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near
another one
do what you can.

— Czesław Miłosz (Czeslaw Milosz)

Asking people to pray
is like telling the wind to blow
the ear to listen
the eye to see
We cannot not pray
anymore than not be
once given the gift of existence
We can only shut it out or deny it

Prayer is simply the conscious dimension of being
when it opens out to receive all that is
gift
marvelously
gratuitously there
word of communion with all things
who hears their silence of wonder
adoration before Him who is
the source and end of all

Prayer is also the birthing of the person
the creative revelation each is called to become
the etching of a mysterious face
reflected by the Mystery we contemplate
the knowing God
as we come to know ourselves
Spirit breathed
by the Thou who calls and loves

Silence then is the plenitude of the Word

Prayer ultimately is love

— Cyril, from Sounding the Silence