I, Zechariah, raised my eyes and looked:
there was a man with a measuring line in his hand.
I asked, “Where are you going?”
He answered, “To measure Jerusalem,
to see how great is its width and how great its length.” Zec 2:5-6
Author: Bill Schulz
east branch
I first photographed at this spot on the East Branch of the Penobscot River in Grindstone, Maine in 2009. Each time I go it’s the same; each time is vastly different. I feel at home here.
I was there this morning.
The immense simplicity of things
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(photo: Greene, ME – January 2019)
I thank you, my God, for having in a thousand different ways led my eyes to discover the immense simplicity of things. Little by little, through the irresistible development of those yearnings you implanted in me as a child, through the influence of gifted friends who entered my life at certain moments to bring light and strength to my mind, and through the awakenings of spirit I owe to the successive initiations, gentle and terrible, which you caused me to undergo: through all these I have been brought to the point where I can no longer see anything, nor any longer breathe, outside that milieu in which all is made one. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Consider how you have fared
Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.
– Haggai 1:5-6
Photo by Harry Smith on Pexels.com
Until we walk with despair
(Photo: Berkeley, CA – April 2006)
Until we walk with despair, and still have hope, we will not know that our hope was not just hope in ourselves, in our own successes, in our power to make a difference, in our image of what perfection should be. We need hope from a much deeper Source. We need a hope larger than ourselves.
Until we walk with personal issues of despair, we will never uncover the Real Hope on the other side of that despair. Until we allow the crash and crush of our images, we will never discover the Real Life beyond what only seems like death. Remember, death is an imaginary loss of an imaginary self, that is going to pass anyway.
This very journey is probably the heart of what Jesus came to reveal.
– Richard Rohr
#1040
The Coming of Light – Mark Strand
from Requiem – Anna Akhmatova
This isn’t me, someone else suffers.
I couldn’t survive that. And what happened,
May it be covered in coarse black cloth,
Let them carry away the streetlights …
Night.
(portrait of Anna Akhmatova, Amedeo Modigliani)
look at humanity
Look at humanity, how lacking in light people are,
how they perish out of desire for perishable things.
Because of pride they keep separate from God,
dead to the spirit, living a lie.
Isn’t it amazing how their spirits are imprisoned,
while all the while they hold the key in their hands!
– Rumi
(Photo: Florence – July 2002)
Hear this, you who trample the needy
Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?”— skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.
The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done.”
– Amos 8:4-7
Edge of Atlantic 