Welcome to the Abbey’s Poetry Party #59!
I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your own poem. Scroll down and add it in the comments section below. Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog (if you have one), Facebook, or Twitter, and encourage others to come join the party! (permission is granted to reprint the image if a link is provided back to this post).
As I settle into my new life here in Vienna, I am aware that August for many shops, is a time to close up and go off on vacation. Not being obsessed here with the American quest for continual productivity and availability, I have found the many signs in store windows indicating they are closed for holiday to be refreshing.
Every season has its invitation. Summer asks us to contemplate what the spaciousness of blue skies and the long opening of daylight is calling our hearts to consider? As we grow closer to autumn’s harvest, what are the fruits of summer you still want to savor? What is ripening in you? What sweetness is asking you to give your whole heart to it? Let your response to these questions emerge in a poem and share below with the Abbey community.
On Friday, August 10, I will select one name at random from the submissions and the winner receives a free copy of my upcoming book Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings — Annotated & Explained straight from SkyLight Paths when it is released later this month.
If you are looking ahead to fall for an online opportunity to listen more closely to your own threshold calling, join us for Women on the Threshold. Or if you want to nourish your inner monk and artist, consider Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist. Both experiences are 12 weeks long; both promise lots of transformative possibility . . .
49 Responses
View within, without the Arch
Standing close i see your details, carving made with expert hand and heart,
stength needed to stand you up and bring you into balance,
standing close i can lean on you, receiving support, warmth, strength,
in close i can be vulnerable, protected, heard in my silent needs.
Walking away i see your magnificnet size, your curves, your form in different lights,
Vulnerable i feel out here too, and yet……. drawing within receiving also your
beauty, your strength, your vulnerability.
That’s a thought, a question, are you vulnerable, do you need me as I need you?
Hmmmm, I’ll leave you with that, ponder it and get back to me will you, I’d like that!
I’m waiting in the ” paradise of silence” Susannah Connolly 2012 Dec