An image and memory from a recent walk, a poem of reflection and shadow for a mid-winter day... Walking through the woods near the lake at the end of a warm winter’s day the sun so near the horizon that it sends its golden carpet unfurling recklessly across the earth, I catch myself walking beside me. …
Tag: Poetry
I recently came across this line of poetry from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: “Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.” And, of course, that’s right. Take, for example, the pick-up games of some variation of baseball (fuzz ball, Indian ball, Wiffle® ball, cork ball, kickball, step ball) of my childhood in North St. Louis in the early ‘70s. …
He was walking through the autumn-thinned woods, a carpet of fallen yellow beneath his feet. He put one foot in front of the other, the walk more of an obligation to himself than anything else. Sometimes, he thought, he prayed while he walked, but today he could not gather the will. The woods were silent and empty, as was he. …
Sometimes, the quiet we seek is not mere silence. Rather, it is silence enough to hear a whisper, the voice of God calling out to us in the sounds of the earth. For this sunny, warming Sunday morning, I offer a poem about what we can hear if we dare silence ourselves. …
This weekend, Sue and I are in southern Wisconsin, and yesterday I walked through a broad swath of wildflower prairie adjacent to the place where we are staying. I stopped in amazement of what was before me: a noisy, ever-moving and always changing sea of grass, flowers, bees, birds and shifting light. When we stand in the midst of such natural glory, we stand at the center of creation, and we can begin to find our place in the world. …
For it is in silence that we grow, that we form ideas, that we reach out for God. Silence must be sought out and cultivated. We must make room for it. We must make time for it, for it points us toward God. …
We may be re-energized by a brisk walk or a exhilarated by a bike ride, but we also require the quiet introspection that comes from solitude, reflection or prayer, from placing ourselves before the world like an open lens and allowing ourselves to be imprinted by it all, like photographic plates or film, by what the world is showing us. …
I stand at the edge of the world Sea and sand swirling ‘round my feet Anchored by the weight of the pulling and swelling Facing outward, toward a monochrome horizon Ocean and sky barely distinguishable one from the other A landscape that could have been sketched by a No. 2 pencil. …
So much of prayer, like so much of the creative process, is in fact about waiting. But it is not a passive waiting as much as it is a time of expectation that something will happen, a hidden promise that revelation or inspiration will come if we leave ourselves open to that secret and mystical movement of God in our lives. …
Asking “what if” is one of the most creative and contemplative questions we can ask ourselves. How many books, poems, paintings, songs, plays or other creative works have come to life because the artist dared to ask, “what if?” …