The feast of Saint Anselm

"I want to understand something of the truth which my heart believes and loves. I do not seek thus to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order that I may understand."

--Saint Anselm, whom Dante places among the spirits of light and power in the Sphere of the Sun.

The music of the Elves

"I thought that Elves were all for moon and stars; but this is more elvish than anything I ever heard tell of. I feel as if I was inside a song, if you take my meaning."

--Sam to Frodo in Lothlorien, in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

The music of Lothlorien: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3TglKQnl3Q

In Exmoor...

"And through the dewy meadow's breast, fringed with shade, but touched on one side with the sun-smile, ran the crystal water, curving in its brightness like diverted hope."

--from R. D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone

Outlaws...

"They said they would rather be outlaws for a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever."

--from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

A Walking Song

"Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun."

--sung by Frodo, Sam, and Pippin as they set off for Buckland in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

The Mystical Rose of the Saints

"Dante, in his thirtieth canto of Paradise, compares the light of glory, with which it is given intelligent creatures to see openly the Creator, to a river of light that flows in an immense circle around the Most Blessed Trinity. Disposed in a gentle declivity are all of the souls of the Blessed, in more than a thousand circular steps ascending toward the center, whence all the splendor comes from the rays which God projects on that assembly of Blessed:

"Therefore, in the form of a candid rose
The blessed militia she pointed to me,
That Christ in His Blood did espouse. "
(Par. c. 31)

while the Angels flitted here and there alighting upon the petals of that enormous flower and from there reascended
"up there where His love sojourns forever"
as swarms of bees, that now alight on the flowers to extract the nectar and now return to the beehive.

In describing the loveliness of those Angels with face resplendent as a vivid flame, with golden wings and the rest of the body more candid than snow, the poet observes that, descending into the rose, they directed each Blessed coming up to the Fatherland to their proper place, allotting to each that measure of light and love that each had earned during life on this land of exile.

O beautiful Angels, assign also to us a place in that mystical rose when we shall land on the shores of the celestial bliss, so that, from one of its petals, immersing the pupil of our eyes in that river of light, we may satisfy this thirst of truth and love which in vain we now try to quench in earthly things."

--from Heaven: Where Love reigns by Sister Mary Raphael, D. S. P.

The beauty of the world

Spring, and the birds are singing in the trees above me, their music echoing the joy within my heart as I walk beneath a canopy of leaves and sky. Time stands still; and the breezes dance around me as I move along the path which stretches far before me. The path goes on and I follow, never doubting that each step is the one I should be taking. The beauty of the world is all around me, and I pause to savor it as this moment lasts much longer than a moment should. How much God has given to me, and how little I have to give in return! But it is the very gift that He wants. So, like a child with earth-stained hands, I run to lay the flowers of my gratefulness at His feet.