Who so loves

“Who so loves believes the impossible.”

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Winter birds

I heard the birds singing

in frozen trees;

and I wondered how

in bitter cold,

with Spring so far away,

such hope could move those tiny hearts

to sing for joy unseen.

(first published on January 6, 2009)

Down these mean streets

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”

--Rebecca Harding Davis

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

"I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next."

--Words of Our Lady of Lourdes to Bernadette Soubirous on February 18, 1858. 

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

Open door

"Fortune always leaves a door open in adversity so that it can be remedied."

--Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote

Happiest

“He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home."

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(This is my home:  I call it "Rivendell.")

Lost and Found

I missed him when the sun began to bend;

I found him not when I had lost his rim;

With many tears I went in search of him,

Climbing high mountains which did still ascend,

And gave me echoes when I called my friend;

Through cities vast and charnel-houses grim,

And high cathedrals where the light was dim,

Through books and arts and works without an end,

But found him not--the friend whom I had lost.

And yet I found him--as I found the lark,

A sound in fields I heard but could not mark;

I found him nearest when I missed him most;

I found him in my heart, a life in frost,

A light I knew not till my soul was dark.
 
--George MacDonald