Poetry Blog Day

The Tulips

by Ricky Ian Gordon

The tulips at that perfect place
crane their necks with liquid grace
like swans who circling, collide
within the lake this vase provides.

They stood like soldiers, stiff, before
as if they had been called to war.
In two days more, when petals fall,
I will entomb them in the hall

with trash; the morning’s coffee grinds,
old newspapers, and lemon rinds.
It’s bitter that such loveliness
should come to this,
could come to this.

But now their purpleness ignites
the room with incandescent lights.
Their stamens reach their yellow tongues
to lick the air into their lungs
through stems attached to whitish manes.
The pistil stains.

And even though there are no bees
about the room for them to please,
I take them in like honey dew-
and buzzing now,
I think of you…

I think of you who bought me these,
at least,
I wish you had,
as that might ease the ache
of passing hours.
A love is dying, like these flowers.

Bill Bryson on Australia

I love travel writing, especially with a good mix of history and humor.  Few writers do this as well as Bill Bryson does.  Here is an excerpt from “In a Sunburned Country”.

Every cultural instinct and previous experience tells you that when you travel this far you should find, at the very least, people on camels.  There should be unrecognizable lettering on the signs, and swarthy men in robes drinking coffee from thimble-sized cup and puffing on hookahs, and rattletrap buses and potholes in the road and a real possibility of disease on everything you touch–but no, it’s not like that at all.  This is comfortable and clean and familiar.  Apart from a tendency among men of a certain age to wear knee-high socks with shorts, these people are just like you and me.  This is wonderful.  This is exhilarating.  This is why I love to come to Australia.

There are other reasons as well, of course, and I am pleased to put them on record here.  The people are immensely likable–cheerful,  extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging.  Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water.  They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian.  The food is excellent.  The beer is cold.  The sun nearly always shines.  There is coffee on every corner.  Rupert Murdoch no longer lives there.  Life doesn’t get much better than this.

from “Stepping Heavenward”

“Stepping Heavenward” is one of my very favorite books, which I first heard on the radio, being read by one of my very favorite authors, Elisabeth Elliott.

“It is a marvel to me why God allows characters like mine to defile His Church.  I can only account for it with the thought that if I ever am perfected, I shall be a great honor to His name, for surely worse material for building up a temple of the Holy Ghost was never gathered together before.”

The reason I keep reading this little book that is written like an old-fashioned dairy from the 1800′s is that it keeps striking a chord in me, like the quote above, I can quite relate too!

On our right to rights

“Christianity teaches righteousness, not rights.  It empasizes honor, not equality.  A Christian’s concern is what is owed to the other, not what is owed to himself.”

Elisbeth Elliott

Go R.A.P somebody

The other day I wrote, by hand, thank you notes for Christmas presents received and it was a big hit! I received so much feedback, you’d think I’d baked a batch of cookies–with that cookie smell wafting throughout the house.

Here are some of the thoughts on being grateful/thankful that prompted me handwrite real live thank you note:

“If there is a high road to demonstration, it is through praise and thanksgiving.” Emmet Fox

Counting your blessings is a good spiritual practice, like a business taking yearly inventory, we should acknowledge our good. also Emmet Fox, paraphrased

“I conducted a survey to find out what things people wanted most in life…people want Recognition, Appreciation and Praise!” Dr. Zonnya

Try this as an experiment: Express some form of a Recognition, Appreciation or Praise, at the next argumentative person that comes your way, observe what happens.

open mind

I liked this quote someone sent me:

“Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out!”

verse for week of Aug 1, 2006

“If we are indeed made in the image of our Creator, it stands to reason that we are most like that Creator when we are creating something ourselves.  So the very act is sacred…”

“The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice”  p.99

Susan Gordon Lydon

That rascal, Pascal and his wager, verse for July 25th

Blaise Pascal was a gambling man, and a brilliant mathematician, and he thought he could figure out a way to win with the dice more often.  Thus, the theory of probibility was hatched.

Pascal also struggled with the question; is there a God?  Always calculating his odds, the answer came to be known as “Pascal’s Wager”.

“If God DOES NOT exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he DOES exist, one will lose everything by not believing.”

verse for July 16th, 2006

It should not surprise us that creativity arises out of the pit of life rather than the high places. For creativity is the ability to put old material into new form. And it is only when old molds and old ways of doing things are forcibly broken up by need or suffering, compelling us to regroup, to rethink, to begin again, that the creative process starts to flow.

taken from “Beyond Our Selves: a woman’s pilgrimage in faith” by the late Catherine Marshall p.149

Where is the Beauty and the Truth we seek? (Shelley)

Life is a journey of the heart that requires the mind–not the other way around. The church sometimes gets this backward and makes knowing the right things the center of life.

It’s not; the heart is the center of life.

Desire is always where the action is.

Amen to that.

many thanks to John Eldredge from the “Journey of Desire: Searching for the Life We’ve Only Dreamed Of” p.202 for his wise observations.