Allium is one of my new favorite flowers (after peonies, of course). For some reason I had never seen or noticed them before. They look to me like purple dandelion seed pods or a tiny fireworks display. Blessings upon your weekend. May you discover new beauty you never noticed before! -Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
In the last couple of weeks we have watched Blood Diamond which takes place in Sierra Leone and The Last King of Scotland which is about Uganda. They were both heart-rending films. I also have been reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmeal Beah which addresses the Sierra Leone story from the perspective of a boy soldier who was rehabilitated and now lives in the US. It raised again for me the question of how we live in meaningful engagement with the sorrows and struggles of the whole world? A couple months back we went to see a powerful performance of the Soweto Gospel Choir.
Yesterday I splurged on a bouquet of peonies and proceeded to fall completely in love with them when I got home. I have never before spent so much time gazing at and inhaling the scent of these splendid flowers. I cultivated my new love through the lens of my camera. Some days the abundance I find in words and images is enough to break my heart wide open. What has broken your heart open this day? -Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Driving Under the Influence of Poetry Scribbling on scraps of paper On the seat next to me As my car sails down The freeways. Words tumbling out Around that sharp turn. Poems dashed off at stop lights They will not wait for me To sit politely at a desk. Poems on the run. No speed limit for them. They race in my head As I keep one eye on the road. Few know of these dangers. So, watch out for the drivers With a pen in their hand And a poem in their heart. Beware! -Pamela McCauley Pamela is a
What a gathering-the purple tongues of iris licking out at spikes of lupine, the orange crepe skirts of poppies lifting over buttercup and daisy. Who can be grim in the face of such abundance? There is nothing to compare, no need for beauty to compete. The voluptuous rhododendron and the plain grass are equally filled with themselves, equally declare the miracles of color and form. This is what community looks like- this vibrant jostle, stem by stem declaring the marvelous joining. This is the face of communion, the incarnation once more gracefully resurrected from winter. Hold these things together
Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything! -Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet I am a pretty patient person. I usually don’t mind the periods of
Tess at Anchors andMasts tagged me for this meme. The rules are: People who are tagged start by thinking about 7 random facts/habits about themselves. Each player then must write about those seven things on their blog, as well as include these rules. Players then need to choose 7 people to tag and list their names. Don’t forget to leave each person a comment telling them they’ve been tagged. 1. I am not a big reader of fiction, I much prefer nonfiction. In the last ten years the only novel I have read that I can think of is The Secret
Love Poems to God, II, 22 You are the future, the red sky before sunrise over the fields of time. You are the cock’s crow when night is done, you are the dew and the bells of matins, maiden, stranger, mother, death. You create yourself in ever-changing shapes that rise from the stuff of our days— unsung, unmourned, undescribed, like a forest we never knew. You are the deep innerness of all things, the last word that can never be spoken. To each of us you reveal yourself differently: to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.
Summer in the Methow Purged from the hive, she hovers, then dives into the stamen’s glow. Spring gold A whirling dervish on the Nootka rose I want work like that! Work that makes me dizzy Makes me drunk on sweet nectar finds me dancing across the plush, pink petals of all that I love. -Kathy Heffernan I was riding the route 14 bus last Thursday toward downtown and gazed up at the words and images posted overhead. My eyes were of course drawn to the poem in the midst of all the advertising. The Methow is a valley in the North
Lately I have been receiving several requests for prints of various photos found on my blog which I am happy to offer, so I am formally adding this option to my Offerings page. If you are ever interested in receiving a print of any photos I take here please let me know the image and size and I can send you a Paypal invoice for credit card payment. I have been taking a Digital Photography course this spring, learning more about the manual features of my camera, stretching myself with the assignments, and working with Photoshop (I finally broke down and
