The perfect lover

"Only the perfect Christian can be the perfect lover."

--Dom Eugene Boylan in This Tremendous Lover

"...but still there is much that is fair..."

"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."

-Haldir in The Fellowship of the Ring

Wintry days

These wintry days have their own particular beauty: icy-blue skies like frozen oceans or bright but bitter-cold ones when the sun is out. I have learned to tell what weather is coming by watching the flight of migratory birds above me. These creatures always know which way to go to survive the long Winter; their Creator has fashioned them to know. It is a wonder to see it, to be a part of it, even from a distance.

Soon the snowdrops will awaken and begin to peep their tiny white heads above the soil. The robins will sing, and the stream will rush on without ice or snow to slow it. Spring is coming, and I will walk my favorite trails once again.

Nothing... to recommend her...

"She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an excellent walker. I shall never forget her appearance this morning. She really looked almost wild... To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to shew an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum."

--Mrs. Hurst in Pride and Prejudice.

Flos florum

"Of all the flowers
from all the gardens
in all the world
you are the one
I choose,
over and over
and always."
These are the words by which I will know you.

Tenebrae

Dear one,
won't you leave the dark world
in which you live
for a bright one?
It is light which you crave,
The Light which will save you.
I was once there
where you are now.
I knew the blackness well;
I mistook it for my friend.
But a friend will always lead us
to the truth.
The darkness is a black lie.
Cast it away
for good.
Yes, for good.

Passing through the penumbra*

I see you there
in shadowed space,
midst dark and light:
eclipsed,
day and night
a tunnel
where you find yourself
since you lost yourself.
There is light at the end,
but how to find it?
There is a way.
I'll show you
if you will let me.

*penumbra--a partial shadow, as in an eclipse, between regions of complete shadow and complete illumination.