salt

there is a gnawing at my
heart
it is the sorrows of the world.
why is it that i see your hand
under my feet
and the next day i'm drowning?
was it not you who also
made the sea?
is it you who engulfs me?
and helps me brush the salt off?

my thoughts as described by Charlotte Bronte

"I hold to another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all."

Is that my fate?

Do they prove anything to you, these tears?

All that I had I laid outside that door
where I was told you lived, and someone took those gifts,
was it you?

Were they that worthless that no thanks was given?
That must have been the case for I heard
not one word of gratitude.

Has it ever happened that a lover courting a lover
has not offered trinkets? Surely you did
not begrudge me for that.

In the world of amorous play amongst your forest creatures
I have tried to learn some secret about love
to bring you as near as they did; for I see how happy
you made them.

The flame called the moth but the glass pane was there.
How many have died not in the fire but in the cold,
crazed in longing.

Is that fate of any heart to not reach you?

No, no, that is not the fate of any soul.

-St. John of the Cross

Countess Daria Chernyshova-Saltykova

Friday - always a joy in itself. I get to wear whatever I want to work, which for some reason always seems to change everything. Funny how fickle my attitude can be. All week I've been feeling a little down, a little low on much needed energy, a little introspective and introverted. I've been alone every evening... Friday, I'm awake. I'm free. After work I find myself continuing in my ever introversion and end up at an art exhibit. Seeking comfort from those who, though long gone, have portrayed the human condition so marvelously - marrying our similarities through the generations; a consolation to a weary soul comforted by the wearied. I entered the room peacefully and find myself surrounded by humans, the quizzical and portrayed. And with much needed classical music to keep my busy mind focused on my soul-refreshing, I popped in my earphones and started to walk through the paintings of earlier centuries. A portrait in specific, "Portrait of the Countess Daria Chernyshova-Saltykova by Francois-Hubert Drouais caught my eye and stopped me from my casual wandering. The Countess stares back at me. I couldn't stop watching her still figure. There was something so human about her, as if she was more than a painting but rather a woman caught in a frame by some spell. Her appearance is both young and old. White hair and rosie cheeks. The painting contains dark greys, and blues contrasting her perfect ivory skin and choking white pearls. Her deep blue eyes are piercing and seem to hold a secret. She's wise... very wise. Experience surrounds her like a wafting aura. Stories of sorrow, loss, love, life, death, joy and pain are told by her eyes. But she sits still, perfect, submissive. The appearance of a beautiful young naive woman dressed up in all the finery a reputable woman should adorn. Her meager smile and placid expression do not fool me. She's meant to portray a perfect innocence and ignorance. Masking her deep wisdom she plays her part, sits silently. I keep her gaze for awhile, half-expecting that she would pop right out of the painting and together we would discuss our common conceptions. But she remained picture perfect, still-posed.
I smiled back at her and eventually continued on. She knew I understood.

if

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

i think this is very wise.
i'm trying to come up with a gender inclusive ending. any ideas? :)

The Monastery Orchard in Early Spring

God's cows are in the fields,
safely grazing. I can see them
through bare branches,
through the steady rain,
fir trees seem ashamed
and tired, bending under winter coats.

I, too, want to be light enough
for this day: throw off impediments,
push like a tulip
through a muddy smear of snow.

I want to take the rain to heart
and feel it move
like possibility, the idea
of change, through things
seen and unseen,
forces, principalities, powers.

Newton named the force that pulls the apple
and the moon with it,
toward the center of the earth.
Augustine found a desire as strong: to steal,
to possess, then throw away.
Encounter with fruit is dangerous:
the pear's womanly shape forever mocked him.

A man and a woman are talking.
Rain moves down and
branches lift up
to learn again
how to hold their fill of green
and blossom, and bear each fruit to glory,
letting it fall.

-Kathleen Norris

myself as a greek talking parrot OR As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

-C S Lewis

i read this poem and a tear came to my eye..
yes, this is me.
masking my desire to love as a solely selfless desire.. and struggling to love those who "don't love" as i have "so attained" to. yes, i have lovingly deceived myself in thinking my love was selfless. i think ignorance to our selfish ambitions is bliss. and when i'm forced to see myself for what i really am... forced to see how much i am deeply in love with my "loving" self... it can be quite a sobering experience. wisdom brings pain.
ooh, but what a revelation.. and then comes what freedom! to see reality. to understand His grace again.. and conceive that i am but human in need of a love far beyond my own. a love that flattens me and uplifts me with the rest of humankind. again, we are equals, limited in love and awing at Love's existence.
He again looks at me with loving eyes, sprinkles the ground with flecks of gold and green and watches as I fall on my face amongst his demonstration of love. "God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous."

never seed a pomegranate in a white hoody and other such advices

I was seeding a pomegranate in my white hoody and managed to get the blood red juice everywhere. I guess it's not surprising that when i was a teenager my friends were going to buy me a book that told me what stained and what would wash out. I think i like to get dirty. Anyways, it made me think of my mom. For some random reason i suddenly remembered this conversation we had when i was a child. I remember re-telling her some story about the latest hollywood star and how amazing, beautiful and talented they were. My mom smiled at me from our large brown couch and said, "Stephanie the 'stars' are just people, like you and me." today i hold the same value as my mom. A value that all people are equal and stand before God the same regardless of status, prestige, wealth, education, beauty, talent, (place your favourite social value here), etc. I guess i'm just remembering what i've been raised in. Only as an adult (can i call myself that?) have i come to realize what a great value system my parents held and how they truly lived it out. i am so blessed to have been brought up with their examples.
My parents were both hippies at one point, both valued nutrition/health, the environment, equality, love and servanthood. Therefore i grew up eating what i thought disgusting healthy food, recycling EVERYTHING that could be recycled and wearing hand-me-down clothes. Of course no child admires these things when they are young. It's just annoying and uncool. My mom would drive us to school in a brown rusty station wagon that was practically falling apart, stalled at every corner and made loud noises in the cold winter. I was embarrassed. My mom thought, "Use it until it's broken." she (and my dad) had a sense of "waste not, want not." some people have nothing. We have a car to get around in, and look! it talks to us!
When i was little everyone compared what their moms made them for their lunches. I remember having sandwiches made of more seeds than bread substance, trying to transfer as much crumbling "bread" from my fingers into my mouth as possible; and an apple for dessert. I always envied the kid who got chips and sandwiches on beautiful white bread.
My mom always told us we were beautiful. That we could do anything we wanted. That we were loved no matter what happened, whether we got bad grades or not, whether we made the team or not, whether we quit piano (ahem..) or not!
My mom painted, danced, played outdoors, went on sleepovers with friends in her 40's, wrote poetry, baked, made crafts, played guitar, took care of the elderly. She was (is) amazing. But as i grow up and look back what is most amazing about my mom amidst her various talents and admirable qualities - she loved.
My dad told me a couple months ago something that brought tears to my eyes. He said that when my mother was dying and was asked what she wanted to do at the great banquet feast in heaven her reply was, "I want to serve."
That's my mom!! Her life to me is the greatest of advices!

fear of vulnerability

pride?

beautiful glimpses of love

The Enemy [God] wants to bring humans to a state of mind in which s/he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than s/he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him/her, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his/her own favour that they can rejoice in their own talents as frankly and gratefully as in their neighbour's talents - or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each human, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even his/herself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love - a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours. For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left.