Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone, 

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home

tonight.

The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

— David Whyte

Trough

 

Trough

 

There is a trough in waves,
A low spot
Where horizon disappears
And only sky
And water
Are our company.

 

And there we lose our way
Unless
We rest, knowing the wave will bring us
To its crest again.

 

There we may drown
If we let fear
Hold us within its grip and shake us
Side to side,
And leave us flailing, torn, disoriented.

 

But if we rest there
In the trough,
Are silent,
Being with
The low part of the wave,
Keeping
Our energy and
Noticing the shape of things,
The flow,
Then time alone
Will bring us to another
Place
Where we can see
Horizon, see the land again,
Regain our sense
Of where
We are,
And where we need to swim.

 

~ Judy Brown ~

 

(The Sea Accepts All Rivers)

Why all this music?

 

To be alive: not just the carcass
But the spark.
That's crudely put, but ...

 

If we're not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?

 

~ Gregory Orr ~

 

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities. 
We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest. 
We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

~ Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero ~

(murdered on March 24, 1980)