Poem: The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.

                    W. B. Yeats

 

 

 

 

Poem: A Maze Me

Life is a tangle of
twisting paths.
Some short.
Some long.
There are dead ends.
And there are choices.
And wrong turns,
and detours,
and yield signs,
and instruction booklets,
and star maps,
and happiness,
and loneliness.
And friends.
And sisters.
And love.
And poetry.

Life is a maze.
You are a maze.
Amazed.
And amazing.

            Naomi Shihab

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Philosophical solution

According to his early biographers, at a certain point in his life
Kant had a ‘maxim’ not to smoke more than a single pipe a day,
tempted though he was.
He adhered to this maxim rigorously.
After a while, however, he bought a bigger pipe.

Jens Timmermann, Kant’s Puzzling Ethics of Maxims
The Harvard Review of Philosophy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pay attention

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

                Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace 

 

 

 

 

 

The best champagne

Laughter is just like champagne --
        only without the headache afterwards.

                Elizabeth Jane Howard, Mr. Wrong

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let it go

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded,
not with the fanfare of epiphany,
but with pain gathering its things, packing up,
and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life is a Journey

Birth is a beginning
And death a destination
And life is a journey:
From childhood to maturity
And youth to age;
From innocence to awareness
And ignorance to knowing;
From foolishness to discretion
And then perhaps to wisdom.

From weakness to strength or
From strength to weakness
And often back again;
From health to sickness,
And we pray to health again.

From offence to forgiveness,
From loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude,
From pain to compassion,
From grief to understanding,
From fear to faith.

From defeat to defeat to defeat
Until, not looking backwards or ahead,
We see that victory lies not
At some high point along the way
But in having made the journey
Step by step,
A sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning
And death a destination
And life is a journey,
A sacred pilgrimage --
To life everlasting.

Gates of Repentance Prayer Book, Yom Kippur, Evening Service