Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.” – Soren Kierkegaard
patience
accept whatever befalls
Accept whatever befalls you,
when sorrowful, be steadfast,
and in crushing misfortune be patient;
For in fire gold and silver are tested,
and worthy people in the crucible of humiliation.
Trust God and God will help you;
trust in [God], and [God] will direct your way;
keep [God’s] fear and grow old therein.
– Sirach 2:4-6
the splendid paradox
Strength arises from complete defeat, and the loss of one’s old life is a condition for finding a new one. – A Day at a Time
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through . . .
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity.
We will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
the impossible (has happened)
Yesterday I learned that my book, A Consistent Response to The Impossible, will be published in 2019. Stunning.
Here’s the title poem:
#732 – seasick
If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day. – Leonard Cohen
The night is not endless
A single sentence, a single word, a single awareness may turn life over, and while you may not yet be found, you are no longer lost. It is impossible to express. Your dream of the world is unmasked, creating an opening. The night, however dark, is not endless, because in that smallest opening you glimpsed light moving in the dark. It was the first real thing you have known. – Paula D’Arcy
Photo: Airline Road, Maine 2008
The truth is formed in silence
The truth is formed in silence and work and suffering – with which we become true. But we interfere with God’s work by talking too much about ourselves – even telling God what we ought to do – advising God how to make us perfect and listening for God’s voice to answer us with approval. We soon grow impatient and turn aside from the silence that disturbs us (the silence in which God’s work can best be done), and we invent the answer and the approval which will never come. Thomas Merton, journal entry November 12, 1952
Give us strength in temptation, endurance in trial, and gratitude in prosperity.
50 years of poetry
I’ve been writing seriously for 50 years and I just got paid for the first time – $20 or $.40 per year. As Guy Clark wrote, “there ain’t no money in poetry/that’s what set the poet free/I’ve had all the freedom I can stand…”
I’m so happy to be included in the Fall issue of Nine Mile Magazine (available soon on Amazon, iTunes, and in hard copy on http://www.ninemile.org.)
Now I just have to figure out how to spend my hard-earned pay.
Edge of Atlantic 