Poem: The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

                Theodore Roethke

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome

New Yorkers are born all over the country,
and then they come to New York City and it hits them:
Oh, that's who I am.

        Delia Ephron, Sister Mother Husband Dog (Etc.)

 

 

 

 

Raw material

And so I learned what solitude really was.
It was raw material - awesome, malleable,
older than men or worlds or water.
And it was merciless -
for it let a man become precisely
what he alone made of himself.

            David James Duncan, The River Why

 

 

 

 

Fallible, unpredictable, improbable

The future is too interesting and dangerous
to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency.
We need all the fallibility we can get.
Most of all, we need to preserve the absolute unpredictability
and total improbability of our connected minds.

        Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why?

Why blame the dark for being dark?
It is far more helpful to ask
why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.

        Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

 

 

 

 

Things hold

Things don't fall apart. Things hold.
Lines connect in thin ways that last and last
and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept.

            Lucille Clifton, Generations: a memoir

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living faith

The Allah of Islam is the same as the God of Christians and the Ishwara of Hindus. Even as there are numerous names of God in Hinduism, there are as many names of God in Islam. The names do not indicate individuality but attributes, and little man had tried in his humble way to describe mighty God by giving Him attributes, though He is above all attributes, Indescribable, Inconceivable, Immeasurable. Living faith in this God means acceptance of the brotherhood of mankind. It also means equal respect for all religions.

                        Mahatma Gandhi, My God