Something

I should write to you;
it's only polite,
but what to say
between everything and
nothing?
I know--
something.

Waiting

My garden is sleeping. These are the long days of Winter. At least to my mind they are like the darkness before the dawn. There are no flowers to cheer me, no green to freshen the landscape made bleak by ice and snow. Even the sunshine, welcome as it is, reminds me of how long I must wait before Spring comes to stay. I miss the songs of the birds. I miss the warmth of the sun. I miss the long walks on my favorite paths. But I must wait.

It is the waiting that I need so very much-- and that I very much do not want. There are many lessons here, if only I will learn them. While my garden is sleeping, I am waiting. And learning.

Taking tea on my twenty-first birthday, Part 1

On the morning of my twenty-first birthday I awoke to find myself in the place which had occupied my daydreams for as long as I could remember. It was nearly mid-April and the streams of Spring were coursing once again through the countryside of Stratford, a world alive with so many English beauties and wonders that I could scarcely begin to apprehend them all . I walked in a waking dream, so it seemed then and still seems, along cobbled streets which ran to and from the river Avon. Here and there pairs of swans like kings and queens were gliding upon the silvered water as the sun streamed from sapphire skies. I watched the clouds collide and pass each other, blown by strong and silent winds aloft; and soon there began to fall the tiniest of snowflakes, like the laughter of children from a distance. There I stood in the center of the loveliest snow globe I had ever seen as the scenes unfolded before me.

The Secret Sits

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

--Robert Frost

Revelation

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone really find us out.

"Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

--Robert Frost

Mosaic

You are rearranging
the tiles
once again,
Changing the form
and color
Of the picture of
yourself.
Your image altered
in my mind's eye,
I wonder if you
are more yourself
than before.
I can't be sure.

The tower to be built

"...before setting to work for God and to fight against the devil, first calculate your forces; and if you consider yourself well enough equipped to begin, you are a fool, because the tower to be built costs an outrageous price, and the enemy coming out to meet you is an angel, before whom you are of no account. Get to know yourself so well that you cannot contemplate yourself without flinching. Then there will be room for hope. In the sure knowledge that you are obliged to do the impossible in Him who strengthens you, then you are ready for a task which can be performed only through the Cross."

--Jacques Maritain, as quoted by Father Gerald Vann, O.P. in The Seven Swords