Friday, November 26, 2004
 
The Theme is Love, and it is for you - 1, 2, 3:

If Questioning Would Make Us Wise

If questioning would make us wise

No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
If all our tale were told in speech
No Mouths would wander each to each.

Were spirits free from mortal mesh

And love not bound in hearts of flesh
No aching breasts would yearn to meet
And find their ecstasy complete.

For who is there that lives and knows

The secret powers by which he grows?
Were Knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?

Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why"

I love you now until I die.
For I must love because I live
And life in me is what you give.

-Christopher Brennan



- posted by -g @ 1:39 AM | | 0 rocks in pond



 
How do I love thee?

How do I love thee? Let mecount the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath;
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning- Sonnet XLIII


- posted by -g @ 1:14 AM | | 0 rocks in pond



 

The Clod and the Pebble

Love seeketh not Itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.

So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.

-William Blake



- posted by -g @ 1:04 AM | | 0 rocks in pond



Sunday, November 14, 2004
 
The other day I was fighting with my mother and when you fight, you say things that you don't mean. Well, I might have said something along the lines of "Mom is it so dumb for you to go back to school." It got heated. After that, I prayed and went to bed.

In the morning I asked her if she would still pick me up after school. She countered with, "Well, I have to stay after at MY stupid school, so I don't know." I ignored it and kept asking because I needed a yes or no. She kept giving me the same type of response.

After the third time, I just put myself aside, looked her in her face and said, "Mom, I love you." She paused for a moment, shocked I think, and then replied, "I don't believe you." I said it again and got the same reply. Then I said I was very sorry. She didn't believe that either.

She picked me up after school.

The same day my sister forgot to tape a show for me. I was so angy and ready to say a bunch of horrible things, but I let go and said, "Don't worry about it I love you." And I gave her a big hug.

She laughed.


- posted by Amanda @ 3:38 PM | | 0 rocks in pond



Saturday, November 13, 2004
 
Self Reflection

Psalm 42:5, raises the question: "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?" Sometimes I know why I am discouraged; sometimes I don't. I notice that the psalmist does not spend his energy on analyzing his mood. Instead, he speaks to his soul a firm but encouraging word, saying, "Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

I am more prone to discouragement when I put my hope in the wrong things. When I forget to hope in God, the pressures of this fallen world seem much greater. I need reminders to prod my soul back to its proper hope. Sometimes those reminders are elusive, and opening my Bible at random is not the best way to find them. In an effort to lift up my heart, I dwell on things that I remember and have seen to be true in my life. I have experience with them, and I trust them - even when my feelings do not match the facts. They go as follows:
Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
He is able to sympathize with my weaknesses, for he was tempted in every way that I am.
He knows and understands my heart.
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
God has put my sin as far as the east is from the west.
I did not choose God; He chose me and appointed me to go and bear fruit that will last.
God gives good gifts to those who ask for them.
I have been given every spiritual blessing in Christ.
We are God?s children and heirs.
He is mighty, and delights to deliver his people from their troubles.
Christ has died and been raised to life again; death is no longer uncharted territory.
He is coming again, in person.
Christ has gone to prepare a place for me in a house with many rooms.
All the days ordained for me were written by God before one of them came to be.
He knows the number of hairs on my head.
He is my shepherd.
In this world we have troubles, but He has overcome the world.
His strength is made perfect in weakness.
Nothing in all creation can separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
Eye has not seen and ear has not heard what God has prepared for those who love him.
One day, He will wipe every tear from our eyes.

This is not a formula, but dwelling on good helps.
What do you dwell on? What does it do for you?

Amanda...can you post your mother story??? It is powerful!



- posted by -g @ 8:27 PM | | 0 rocks in pond



Monday, November 01, 2004
 
An Apology

Forgive me
for backing over
and smashing
your red wheelbarrow.

It was raining
and the rear wiper
does not work on
my new plum-colored SUV

I am also sorry
about the white
chickens.

F. J. Bergmann


- posted by -g @ 1:18 AM | | 0 rocks in pond



 
This is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me.
They were delicious,
so sweet
and so cold.

William Carlos Williams


Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to
live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live
on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and
cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy, and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Kenneth Koch


- posted by -g @ 1:11 AM | | 0 rocks in pond



Archives:
September 2002| October 2002| November 2002| December 2002| January 2003| February 2003| March 2003| April 2003| May 2003| June 2003| July 2003| September 2003| earlyOctober 2003 | October 2003 | November 2003 | December 2003 | January 2004 | February 2004 | March 2004 | April 2004 | May 2004 | June 2004 | July 2004 | August 2004 | September 2004 | October 2004 | November 2004 | December 2004 | January 2005 | February 2005 | March 2005 | April 2005 | May 2005 | June 2005 | July 2005 | August 2005 | September 2005 | October 2005 | November 2005 | December 2005 | January 2006 | February 2006 | March 2006 | April 2006 | June 2006 | August 2006 | September 2006 | October 2006 | January 2007 | March 2007 | May 2007 | June 2007 | August 2007 | October 2007 | February 2008 | April 2008 | May 2008