David Kanigan
Dogs are our link to paradise.
They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring –
it was peace.
~ Milan Kundera
Photo: Amaya Eguizábal with Sitting with the Dog. Quote: From in The Canine Hiker’s Bible by Doug Gelbert (via macrolit)
But this morning, a kind day has descended, from nowhere,
and making coffee in the usual day, measuring grounds
with the wooden spoon, I remembered,
this is how things happen, cup by cup, familiar gesture
after gesture, what else can we know of safety
or of fruitfulness?
– Marie Howe, excerpt from “From Nowhere” in The Good Thief: Poems
Notes: Poem Source: via violentwavesofemotion. Photo: Cup Tasting by Jürg Balsiger
There are mornings when the dog is smushed between us.
The sun breaks through the blinds with rays that warm our blanket tangled bodies.
Silent breathy snores, and the low mumble of a fan.
Picture perfect in my eyes.
Simplistic in others.
Too me?
This is the life.
~ Wandering Girl, “No one can take this from me”
Photo: via Newton
I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday.
It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain.
You can feel the silent and invisible life.
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead: A Novel
Notes: Quote: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo: Celeste Mookherjee
It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.
— David Whyte, “Self Portrait” from Fire in the Earth
Source: Poem – Whiskey River. Photo: Precious Things
A Christian is one who is on the way,
though not necessarily very far along it,
and who has at least some dim
and half-baked idea of whom to thank.
– Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC
Notes:
In all the mountains,
Stillness;
In the treetops
Not a breath of wind.
The birds are silent in the woods.
Just wait: soon enough
You will be quiet too.
~ Robert Hass, “After Goethe” from Time and Materials.
Credits: Photo – Wolerxne. Poem – Nemophilies
If prayer is pure and untainted,
surely that holy breath
that rises from your lips
will join with the breath of heaven
that is always flowing
into you from above […]
Thus that part of God which is within you
is reunited with its source.
~Arthur Green & Barry Holtz, Keter Shem Tov, as adapted in Your Word is Fire
Credits: Poem: Thank you Make Believe Boutique. Photo: Samantha West (Untitled)
When I was young, and for a long time afterward, Sunday afternoons were melancholy. I used to blame it on memories on my father retiring alone to his study to listen to classical music. I didn’t like classical music. It made me uneasy…I didn’t like the closed door.
But I think something else was going on. The span of a week is a reminder of the finite, even to the young. And powerful Sunday, which starts out fat and lazy, stretching endlessly ahead, dwindles to a wisp, and just like that, it’s over.
~ Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir
Notes:
Quiet has many moods. When our sons are home, their energy is palpable. Even when they’re upstairs sleeping I can sense them, can feel the house filling with their presence, expanding like a sail billowed with air. I love the dawn stillness of a house full of sleepers, love knowing that within these walls our entire family is contained and safe, reunited, our stable four-sided shape resurrected. But those days are the exception now, not the norm.
~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
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