Dancing Down the Moon

Poem of the Moment

This morning I had to share this gorgeous poem with you:

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

~Antonio Machado

(see more of his work here)

Quote of the Moment

My father still believes that God is a white-haired fellow with blue eyes, almost exactly like himself. My God is more amorphous, more of a universal constant, like gravity or magnetism. This constant doesn't pick favorites; it simply flows into any opening we make for it. If Hitler had a kindly moment, a moment when, say, he felt like saving a kitten from a flood, I believe that God--barred from Adolf's mind in so many other moments--would have poured into the kindness of that moment and helped the mass murderer reach the kitty.  I believe that the line between good and evil doesn't separate human beings into different categories; it runs through every one of us, and every moment is a choice: heal or destroy.

~Martha Beck
from her memoir
Leaving the Saints:
How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith

Mid-Week Inspiration

The Giver of Stars

Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.

Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,
The life and joy of tongues of flame,
And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,
I may rouse the blear-eyed world,
And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.

~Amy Lowell

Mid-Week Inspiration

Welcome Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning,
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I've heard,
dies young.

~Anne Sexton

Mid-Week Inspiration

I want to dance!
When the sun catches the aspen leaves
They dance;
When it flecks the grasses and mottles the streams
They dance;
When the dark storm bends the black branches
And the wind whips up the waves
They dance;
The bird swings on the elm twig,
The sap races in the tree,
Horses run in the pasture,
Mist fairies glide to and fro in the valley,
Cloud children play in heaven,
The stars sing and dance,
And I want to dance!
I can be raindrops.
I can be leaves and bending grasses,
Gold-mottled streams and running horses,
Racing sap and the hidden heart of flowers.
I can be firelight and moonlight,
A child of the night mist and a sister of the stars.
All the world sings and dances,
And I am a child of all the world.
I want to sing, and--
I want to dance.

~Margaret B. McGee

Rather-Late-in-the-Week Inspiration

Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down.  Otherwise,
clouds.  Sea rippled here and
there.  Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.

But the mind always
wants more than it has --
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.


~ Holly Hughes

Mid-Week Inspiration

Mother of the Universe...

Let us, when swimming with the stream,
become the stream...
Let us, when moving with the music,
become the music...
Let us, when rocking the wounded,
become the suffering...

Let us live for the grace beneath all we want,
let us see it in everything and everyone,
till we admit to the mystery
that when I look deep enough into you,
I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear
in the recess of your heart, you recognize it
as your secret which you thought
no one else knew...

O Let us have the courage
to hold each other when we break
and worship what unfolds...
Let us embrace
that unexpected moment of unity
as the atom of God...

O nameless spirit that is not done with us,
let us love without a net
beyond the fear of death
until the speck of peace
we guard so well
becomes the world...

~ Mark Neppo

Mid-Week Inspiration

Praise What Comes

surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved
of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather.  Praise

talk with just about anyone.  And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks
before sleep.  Praising these for practice, perhaps

you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended.  At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions: did I love,

finish my task in the world?  Learn at least one
of the many names of God?  At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another

ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

~ Jeanne Lohmann

I will most likely be out of the blogosphere for the rest of the week, but I hope to be back by next Wednesday at the latest.  In the meantime, enjoy the beauty of Spring (now that, after a brief reappearance of Mother Winter it seems to have returned).  What are you sitting around here for, anyway?  Go outside and play before it gets up to 100 degrees!

Mid-Week Inspiration

What will
our children do in the morning?
Will they wake with their hearts wanting to play,
the way wings
should?

Will they have dreamed the needed flights and gathered
the strength from the planets that all men and women need to balance
the wonderful charms of
the earth

so that her power and beauty does not make us forget our own?

I know all about the ways of the heart - how it wants to be alive.

Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment.  But the sky's mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I
sing those words.

What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly?

~Rumi

Mid-Week Inspiration

Three quotes:

Plunge into matter. Plunge into God. By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us and molds us. We imagine it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact, we live steeped in its burning layers.

~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We live in a world of theophanies. Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure.

~Macrina Wiederkehr

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

~Diane Ackerman