lromanus

[lromanus]

“My awareness of God’s Presence may sound like magic, it may seem to some to be the merest childlike superstition, but it meets my need and is at once the source of my comfort and the heart of my peace.”

— “The Valley of Death” in Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman, p. 186

[lromanus]

“…Some say the love of God can cause a man to faint, plow him down, drive him mad, take him wholly to the ground. That force that filled the void with breath unhinged a Hebrew’s hip, struck a Roman blind, but you had nothing left to lose that night the sky called out your name–nothing to lose but yourself to the wild of a love the stars had never seen, the blazing hills could not explain…”

— from “The Stigmata of Francis” by Abigail Carroll, in Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide compiled by Sarah Arthur, p. 113-114

[lromanus]

“…Because eternity was closeted in time he is my open door to forever…. My life, as his, slips through death’s mesh, time’s bars, joins hands with heaven, speaks with stars.”

— from “Made flesh” by Luci Shaw, found in A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation edited by Luci Shaw, p. 31

[lromanus]

#pieces of me

[lromanus]

“Even in a place you know intimately, each night’s darkness is different.”

— Anne Michaels, from “Miner’s Pond,”  The Weight of Oranges / Miner’s Pond  (McClelland & Stewart, 1997)

[lromanus]

#pieces of me

[lromanus]

#pieces of me

[lromanus]

#pieces of me

[lromanus]

How does a smile get inside you? There is the sky, tilted with light. There is the loosening we call a sunset. Here is where Natalina danced and here is where Alyson and I laughed. Lily shared a blanket until the ants came crawling. We didn’t mind because we understood hunger. Open your mouth and I am full of oxygen again. Love is what is alive between us as good as air. Behind me now is a sky full of colour. Beneath my face is a soreness — smile marking muscle. When I am old, you will sit on my skin. The corners of my mouth. Joy is a promise we make with our body. My skin like the sky is bright with memory. I am always falling apart and back together again. There is always more sky to drive toward. New light to cling to.

— Sanna Wani, “Joy is a promise,” in My Grief, the Sun

[lromanus]

Don't you think I look like an old tree filled with children playing like birds in my branches? I'm trying to exclude everything temporal from my thoughts, to relive all that I've ever experienced through the silence within silence.

– Guy Davenport, from “Gunnar and Nikolai,” A Table of Green Fields: Ten Stories (New Directions, 1993)

[lromanus]

#pieces of me

[lromanus]

Greg Brown _ Wash My Eyes

thanks to 0rph3u5

#greg brown #wash my eyes #Youtube

[lromanus]

#pieces of me #eclipse birdy

[lromanus]

#pieces of me

[lromanus]

“The longer I have known you, the more I have lost sight of you, Which is not as bad as it sounds… ….the better you know the mountain– The more intimate you become– The harder it is to see it whole, as something separate from yourself. You’re not looking at the mountain anymore. You’re in the mountain’s life, as its life pours into you.”

— from “Approaching The Mountain in Prayer” by Barbara Brown Taylor, in A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal edited by Sarah Bessey, p. 137-9

[lromanus]

Meditation at 5 a.m. Blue sky fills every cell of my flesh, each with its own sun. All one sky. Beams of the heart don't stop at the outline of the flesh, but penetrate other bodies, distant hills, every grass blade and moth wing. Do I really have edges? No need to wonder what a star is. Trembling drop of neuro-peptide soma-juice on axon's tip, dripping into a synapse of pain or delight. One sky, one sun, reflected in myriad mud puddles after Spring rain. I am the mud. I am the sky. And who is the sun after all? A golden sound, God's resonant quietness. I do not shy away from saying "God," who is not just Everything, or Consciousness, or Cosmic Energy. God is God, gifting person-hood to every wave and dust mote in creation. Sabbath meditation, a vanishing instant of eternal radiance. Yet afterward, these words linger on the breath: "Silence is alive. Space is awake. Emptinesss is a sea of diamonds, the rippling transcendental light of the body. And merely to Be is to love."

—Alfred K. LaMotte

yourradiance

[lromanus]

You don’t need to take a journey into the wilderness. You need to take a journey into the back yard. The mountaintop is wherever you are. Angels of dew. Forests of moss. Cathedrals of clover and galaxies whirling in black loam. Grand destinations for the eremitic visionary earthworm. Now dig.

—Alfred K. LaMotte

yourradiance