Poetry Archives | Page 23 of 24

Loving everything that increases me. . .

I’ll take all the time I please this afternoon before leaving my place alongside this river. It pleases me, loving rivers. Loving them all the way back to their source. Loving everything that increases me. -Raymond Carver from a poem titled “Where Water Comes Together With Other Water” in a book by the same name. A student included this poem in her last reflection paper and it was one of those wonderful unbidden gifts of the day. I am in love again (how easily I fall in love with poetry!) I want to love “everything that increases me.” I want to love the

October 30, 2006

I want to free what waits within me. . .

I found this poem by Rilke today and I am in love, utterly and completely in love with his images. This is what I was saying in my earlier post on Living Intuitively, Unfolding Organically but with far fewer and more beautiful words. . . I believe in all that has never yet been spoken. I want to free what waits within me so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving. If this is arrogant, God, forgive me, but this is what I need to say. May what I do flow from

October 27, 2006

Unfolding, Bridges, and Openings

I want to live life surprised by the ways my life continues to unfold. I want to delight in the simple offerings of each day. I want to live in awe of the beauty of the world. I have been having lots of dreams lately. One is of a bridge crossing where the road ahead loops upside down like a roller coaster, so you have to drive fast enough and hold on to get across. I’ve had two others where I am living in a house that is right at the edge of the ocean line, the waves crashing onto

October 12, 2006

Lectio Divina Unleashed: Part Two (Poetry)

“People turn to poems for some kind of illumination, for revelations that help them to survive.” -Denise Levertov, “Poetry, Prophecy and Survival” Poetry is language illuminated. When we read poetry we are reading the same words we use for prose, but because of the compactness of images and the poet’s way of pointing us deeper than what we expect to see, poetry has the potential to reveal the sacred to us in new ways. Much of scripture is written in poetic form, making use of metaphor, rhythm, meter, sound, and image to help us grasp an awareness of God. Praying

September 26, 2006

Dwelling in Border Spaces

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world,

September 14, 2006

Delightful Discoveries

In my blog-hopping adventures this morning I discovered two absolute gems. The first is from Rachel at Swandive: a poem from Jack Gilbert’s book Refusing Heaven: A Brief for the Defense Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the

August 31, 2006

Sacred is the Call

I went away to the woods and water expecting to meet God. Instead I met Myself. And we swam together for hours in a blue pool of desire for silence and beauty and stillness so strong that it threatened to drown me with its urgency and longing. The skin of my fingers and toes curled into rivulets, water flooding my ears, I emerged as if from birth again. Naked, alone, and new. Certain of only one thing, that God had whispered my name and my soul reverberated like a gong. It is still humming within me you see. With a

August 24, 2006

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Loving everything that increases me. . .

I want to free what waits within me. . .

Unfolding, Bridges, and Openings

Lectio Divina Unleashed: Part Two (Poetry)

Dwelling in Border Spaces

Delightful Discoveries

Sacred is the Call

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