Sunday Morning

Posted on by Live & Learn

I have found such joy in simple things;
A plain, clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread,
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head.
And in a leaf-laced square along the floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through the door.

I have found such joy in things that fill
My quiet days: a curtain’s blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my windowsill,
A rose, fresh-cut and placed within a vase;
A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there.

~ Grace Noll Crowell, from I Have Found Such Joy

Notes:

34 thoughts on “Sunday Morning”

  3. I have found the older I get..the simpler I like my life. (as long as there’s Talenti in the freezer).

  9. 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.

    by Ann Sexton, from The Awful Rowing Toward God, 1975

  11. “The Patience of Ordinary Things”

    It is a kind of love, is it not?
    How the cup holds the tea,
    How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
    How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
    Or toes. How soles of feet know
    Where they’re supposed to be.
    I’ve been thinking about the patience
    Of ordinary things, how clothes
    Wait respectfully in closets
    And soap dries quietly in the dish,
    And towels drink the wet
    From the skin of the back.
    And the lovely repetition of stairs.
    And what is more generous than a window?

    ~ Pat Schneider
    Another River: New and Selected Poems
    Amherst Writers & Artists Press

    1. That’s it Barbara. Your thought reminds me of:

      Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again.”

      –Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Benediction Classics (February 10, 2017)

  14. I had a pretty good Sunday too – but all those references to a (more) simple life are aiming at my heart’s core in a meaningful way.
    Just watched the film Once More with Morgan Freeman…. as if I had read this before – a simple life – how wonderful.
    Have a good ‘rest of the day’ – here it’s bedtime, soon 🙂

          1. No worries 😉 I know your intention is pure – I periodically set about Pinterest and name check my work as a way of really showing the at even photographers work needs a credit. Is all – but sure use the photograph with a name credit be my guest all the best NDR ✌🏾

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