You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter, or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry,
I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Failing and Falling by Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
Abraham 3:17
There is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Stress Buster #52
Have an optimistic view of the world. Believe that most people are doing the best
they can.
Elder Milton R. Hunter once stressed that “the measure of a people’s happiness comes in proportion to the amount of love they have in their hearts for their fellowmen” (Conference Report, Oct. 1966, p. 39).
From the 1993 Ensign:
Judge not unrighteously. One of the most common human frailties is the urge to find fault with the actions of those around us. Visit a kindergarten class, and you’ll see children tattle with gusto. Visit a high school class, and you’ll see that young people no longer tattle, but they do criticize each other for even little things that go wrong. Visit an office, and you’ll see that the problem even exists among adults.
The Savior has given us some guidelines to follow:
“Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged: but judge righteous judgment.
“For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (JST, Matt. 7:2–3.)
So, what is unrighteous judgment? Being critical of others’ shortcomings, mistakes, and weaknesses, or complaining about what others do or do not do.
What is righteous judgment? It is diligently watching for those things others do well and then openly and generously acknowledging those efforts. Allowing others their imperfections. Striving to positively influence all with whom you come in contact. It is also responding to your conscience and making wise decisions about right and wrong.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Braiding by Li-Young Lee
1.
We two sit on our bed, you
between my legs, your back to me, your head
slightly bowed, that I may brush and braid
your hair. My father
did this for my mother,
just as I do for you. One hand
holds the hem of your hair, the other
works the brush. Both hands climb
as the strokes grow
longer, until I use not only my wrists,
but my arms, then my shoulders, my whole body
rocking in a rower's rhythm, a lover's
even time, as the tangles are undone,
and brush and bare hand run the thick,
fluent length of your hair, whose wintry scent
comes, a faint, human musk.
2.
Last night the room was so cold
I dreamed we were in Pittsburgh again, where winter
persisted and we fell asleep in the last seat
of the 71 Negley, dark mornings going to work.
How I wish we didn't hate those years
while we lived them.
Those were days of books,
days of silences stacked high
as the ceiling of that great, dim hall
where we studied. I remember
the thick, oak tabletops, how cool
they felt against my face
when I lay my head down and slept.
3.
How long your hair has grown.
Gradually, December.
4.
There will come a day
one of us will have to imagine this: you,
after your bath, crosslegged on the bed, sleepy, patient,
while I braid your hair.
5.
Here, what's made, these braids, unmakes
itself in time, and must be made
again, within and against
time. So I braid
your hair each day.
My fingers gather, measure hair,
hook, pull and twist hair and hair.
Deft, quick, they plait,
weave, articulate lock and lock, to make
and make these braids, which point
the direction of my going, of all our continuous going.
And though what's made does not abide,
my making is steadfast, and, besides, there is a making
of which this making-in-time is just a part,
a making which abides
beyond the hands which rise in the combing,
the hands which fall in the braiding,
trailing hair in each stage of its unbraiding.
6.
Love, how the hours accumulate. Uncountable.
The trees grow tall, some people walk away
and diminish forever.
The damp pewter days slip around without warning
and we cross over one year and one year.
We two sit on our bed, you
between my legs, your back to me, your head
slightly bowed, that I may brush and braid
your hair. My father
did this for my mother,
just as I do for you. One hand
holds the hem of your hair, the other
works the brush. Both hands climb
as the strokes grow
longer, until I use not only my wrists,
but my arms, then my shoulders, my whole body
rocking in a rower's rhythm, a lover's
even time, as the tangles are undone,
and brush and bare hand run the thick,
fluent length of your hair, whose wintry scent
comes, a faint, human musk.
2.
Last night the room was so cold
I dreamed we were in Pittsburgh again, where winter
persisted and we fell asleep in the last seat
of the 71 Negley, dark mornings going to work.
How I wish we didn't hate those years
while we lived them.
Those were days of books,
days of silences stacked high
as the ceiling of that great, dim hall
where we studied. I remember
the thick, oak tabletops, how cool
they felt against my face
when I lay my head down and slept.
3.
How long your hair has grown.
Gradually, December.
4.
There will come a day
one of us will have to imagine this: you,
after your bath, crosslegged on the bed, sleepy, patient,
while I braid your hair.
5.
Here, what's made, these braids, unmakes
itself in time, and must be made
again, within and against
time. So I braid
your hair each day.
My fingers gather, measure hair,
hook, pull and twist hair and hair.
Deft, quick, they plait,
weave, articulate lock and lock, to make
and make these braids, which point
the direction of my going, of all our continuous going.
And though what's made does not abide,
my making is steadfast, and, besides, there is a making
of which this making-in-time is just a part,
a making which abides
beyond the hands which rise in the combing,
the hands which fall in the braiding,
trailing hair in each stage of its unbraiding.
6.
Love, how the hours accumulate. Uncountable.
The trees grow tall, some people walk away
and diminish forever.
The damp pewter days slip around without warning
and we cross over one year and one year.
Quote of the Day
The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.
Vincent van Gogh
via Mom
Vincent van Gogh
via Mom
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Sincerely by Naomi Shihab Nye
The envelope, usually white and slim,
bleached as a shell we might press to our ears,
or striped along its flying borders,
sometimes pink, or brown, or puffed,
having traveled that dark space
of slots and chutes and shelves and bags,
having lost faith of finding
either name written on it
ever again, rises out of Mario's hand
into my own. Or I come home
to find it sleeping
in the black box on the slim pole.
And I am rarely equal to it.
We are visited by strangers, saints.
We are visited by the impudent question.
Who holds the knife, the small blade
in a case carved like a fish?
This slicing, this fine rip,
opens a far world, a world apart,
and I try to take it in.
Cranking the creaky door of the heart.
1.
Thank you. The articles about raising children
arrived when my child was being very difficult
and then they vanished. I am certain
they will turn up and he will be
a good boy. In the meantime,
a page describing where one might purchase
Aloha clothing in the capital city of Texas.
Should you have a need. We think of you.
2.
I am sorry I did not answer for so long
but I have been writing to poets in 68 countries
asking to print their poems in the United States.
Yes I am fine. I used to be fine.
What about you?
Each overseas envelope costs 95 cents to mail.
If someone in a far-off country wanted to print your poem
would you say No? Think of the waves and wires
this envelope must cross. The mountains and muddles.
Actually I have no trouble
with poets, only with translators and publishers,
the great go-betweens. This task has come between me
and everything else I love. Can you be patient?
3.
You say you are leaving the island.
You sound very enthusiastic about leaving the island.
Since I left the island, all I care to think about
is the island.
It must be different for you.
You grew up there.
You wear the colors of the horizon inside your bruise.
You have lived on the cliff so long,
staring off to sea dreaming of what lies
on the other side; the big land, the gasp of
rumpled cities, the flush and certainty:
we are what is happening.
May you find it. In the meantime your island
stays lodged inside me, a mint
I turn over and over with my tongue for its endless
flavor.
4.
Thank you for the books you sent which connect
quite specifically to everything I have been thinking of
for the last 12 years.
How did you know this?
We barely met. We barely brushed one another
in the flood of comings-and-goings.
I tried to think of something to send in return
but kept being distracted
by the woolen doll on my desk from Chiapas,
her pigtails tied with pink yarn.
Do you want her? She wears a look of having been
recently startled.
5.
Sometimes a new sister comes forward, or a brother,
and the mouth opens on a hello so long and wide
whole countries live inside it.
Where were you yesterday?
Each corner and tree worth telling.
Now we will have to make letters shaped like kites,
flamboyant tails ripped from rainbow cotton
knotted together, flapping on the huge ache of breeze
that rides between.
bleached as a shell we might press to our ears,
or striped along its flying borders,
sometimes pink, or brown, or puffed,
having traveled that dark space
of slots and chutes and shelves and bags,
having lost faith of finding
either name written on it
ever again, rises out of Mario's hand
into my own. Or I come home
to find it sleeping
in the black box on the slim pole.
And I am rarely equal to it.
We are visited by strangers, saints.
We are visited by the impudent question.
Who holds the knife, the small blade
in a case carved like a fish?
This slicing, this fine rip,
opens a far world, a world apart,
and I try to take it in.
Cranking the creaky door of the heart.
1.
Thank you. The articles about raising children
arrived when my child was being very difficult
and then they vanished. I am certain
they will turn up and he will be
a good boy. In the meantime,
a page describing where one might purchase
Aloha clothing in the capital city of Texas.
Should you have a need. We think of you.
2.
I am sorry I did not answer for so long
but I have been writing to poets in 68 countries
asking to print their poems in the United States.
Yes I am fine. I used to be fine.
What about you?
Each overseas envelope costs 95 cents to mail.
If someone in a far-off country wanted to print your poem
would you say No? Think of the waves and wires
this envelope must cross. The mountains and muddles.
Actually I have no trouble
with poets, only with translators and publishers,
the great go-betweens. This task has come between me
and everything else I love. Can you be patient?
3.
You say you are leaving the island.
You sound very enthusiastic about leaving the island.
Since I left the island, all I care to think about
is the island.
It must be different for you.
You grew up there.
You wear the colors of the horizon inside your bruise.
You have lived on the cliff so long,
staring off to sea dreaming of what lies
on the other side; the big land, the gasp of
rumpled cities, the flush and certainty:
we are what is happening.
May you find it. In the meantime your island
stays lodged inside me, a mint
I turn over and over with my tongue for its endless
flavor.
4.
Thank you for the books you sent which connect
quite specifically to everything I have been thinking of
for the last 12 years.
How did you know this?
We barely met. We barely brushed one another
in the flood of comings-and-goings.
I tried to think of something to send in return
but kept being distracted
by the woolen doll on my desk from Chiapas,
her pigtails tied with pink yarn.
Do you want her? She wears a look of having been
recently startled.
5.
Sometimes a new sister comes forward, or a brother,
and the mouth opens on a hello so long and wide
whole countries live inside it.
Where were you yesterday?
Each corner and tree worth telling.
Now we will have to make letters shaped like kites,
flamboyant tails ripped from rainbow cotton
knotted together, flapping on the huge ache of breeze
that rides between.
Quote of the Day
God who has loved us into existence loves us into the power of loving our brethren. What is not perhaps so generally noticed is that he also loves us into the power of receiving agape (charity) both from himself and from others, for here we meet a quite unexpected obstacle. On the natural level we are full of hunger for our beloved, the hunger to receive family affection, erotic love, and friendship, and it might be expected that we similarly have a hunger to receive agape. But this is untrue. There is that in the heart of every man that resists and resents agape from his fellow creatures or even from his creator. We naturally want to be desired – to be found delightful, to satisfy worthily some hunger in others. To receive a love which is purely a gift, which bears witness solely to the lovingness of the giver and not at all to our loveliness, is a severe mortification. We desperately need to receive such love from God and even from our fellow creatures, but we don’t naturally want to. Our necessity and our wishes are in conflict.
No sooner do we believe God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that he does so not because of what he is, but because of what we are, because we are intrinsically loveable. It is so easy to admit, but so hard to really believe, but we are mirrors that so wholly are derived from the sun that shines on them surely, we think, we must have some inherent luminosity of our own.
As we are to God, so more obviously are we to our fellows. It is hard to bear agape from our fellows and yet each of us needs it. There is that in each of us that simply can’t be loved with natural love. Nobody can be expected to. Only the loveable can be naturally loved. Men can’t be asked to love rancid meat. It can be forgiven and pitied and loved with agape, but not otherwise. Every listener who has a good parent or wife or husband or child, may be sure that at times he is the recipient of agape, loved not because he is loveable, but because love itself is in the other party. This we must learn first to believe, then to endure, and then to delight in. And without guessing about it either. Such I conceive is the world of agape: a world of unbounded giving and unchained receiving where all blessed creatures need and know that they need nothing but God. And are therefore set free to love one another disinterestedly and so their love shall be like his, born neither of your need nor my deserving, but of plain bounty. I think those are drawing nearer to heaven who in this life find that they need men less and love men more. And delight more in being loved without being needed. For where agape is, there in some degree is heaven.
C S Lewis
No sooner do we believe God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that he does so not because of what he is, but because of what we are, because we are intrinsically loveable. It is so easy to admit, but so hard to really believe, but we are mirrors that so wholly are derived from the sun that shines on them surely, we think, we must have some inherent luminosity of our own.
As we are to God, so more obviously are we to our fellows. It is hard to bear agape from our fellows and yet each of us needs it. There is that in each of us that simply can’t be loved with natural love. Nobody can be expected to. Only the loveable can be naturally loved. Men can’t be asked to love rancid meat. It can be forgiven and pitied and loved with agape, but not otherwise. Every listener who has a good parent or wife or husband or child, may be sure that at times he is the recipient of agape, loved not because he is loveable, but because love itself is in the other party. This we must learn first to believe, then to endure, and then to delight in. And without guessing about it either. Such I conceive is the world of agape: a world of unbounded giving and unchained receiving where all blessed creatures need and know that they need nothing but God. And are therefore set free to love one another disinterestedly and so their love shall be like his, born neither of your need nor my deserving, but of plain bounty. I think those are drawing nearer to heaven who in this life find that they need men less and love men more. And delight more in being loved without being needed. For where agape is, there in some degree is heaven.
C S Lewis
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Stress Buster #36
Take a hot bath or shower (or a cool one in summertime) to relieve tension.
In the Jewish Encyclopedia:
“The real significance of the rite of Baptism can not be derived from the Levitical law; but it appears to have had its origin in Babylonian or ancient Semitic practise. As it was the special service administered by Elisha, as prophetic disciple to Elijah his master, to “pour out water upon his hands” (2 Kgs. 3:11), so did Elisha tell Naaman to bathe seven times in the Jordan, in order to recover from his leprosy (2 Kgs. 5). … This idea underlies the prophetic hope of the fountain of purity, which is to cleanse Israel from the spirit of impurity. (See Zech. 13:1; Ezek. 36:25; compare Isa. 4:4.) Thus it is expressed in unmistakable terms in the Mandean writings and teachings … that the living water in which man bathes is to cause his regeneration. For this reason does the writer of the fourth Sibylline Oracles, lines 160–66, … [write,] ‘Ye miserable mortals, repent; wash in living streams your entire frame with its burden of sin; lift to heaven your hands in prayer for forgiveness and cure yourselves of impiety by fear of God!’ This is what John the Baptist preached to the sinners that gathered around him on the Jordan; and herein lies the significance of the bath of every proselyte.” [The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1902), 2:5500.]
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