With Sincerity.
Inspirational Words.
In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light,
are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfilment,
the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now.
Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation,
whose meaning none of us will ever know.
To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
Mary Oliver
Thomas Merton Prayer
My Lord,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me, and I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire, and I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore, I will trust in you always; though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen.
She is Gone
You can shed tears that she/he is gone
Or you can smile because she/he has lived
You can close your eyes and pray that she/he will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she/he has left
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see his/her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday
You can remember her/his and only that she/he is gone
Or you can cherish her/his memory and let it live on
You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what she/he would want:
Smile, open your eyes, love, and go on.
The Prayer of St Francis
Lord make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is Hatred let me sow love
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, Joy
Oh divine master, make me not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To love as to be loved
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life
Amen.
Afterglow
I'd like the memory of me to be a happy one
I'd like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done
I'd like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways,
Of happy times and laughing times and bright and sunny days,
I'd like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun;
Of happy memories that I leave when life is done.
Sleep and poetry
What is more gentle than a wind in summer?
What is more soothing than the pretty hummer
That stays one moment in an open flower,
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?
What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing
In a green island, far from all men's knowing?
More healthful than the leafiness of dales?
More secret than a nest of nightingales?
More serene than Cordelia's countenance?
More full of visions than a high romance?
What, but thee Sleep? Soft closer of our eyes!
Low murmurer of tender lullabies!
Light hoverer around our happy pillows!
Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!
Silent entangler of a beauty's tresses!
Most happy listener! when the morning blesses
Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes
That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise.
John Keats
The Ascending
I have passed a mountain peak and my soul is soaring in the
Firmament of complete and unbound freedom;
I am far, far away, my companions, and the clouds are
Hiding the hills from my eyes.
The valleys are becoming flooded with an ocean of silence, and the
Hands of oblivion are engulfing the roads and the houses;
The prairies and fields are disappearing behind a white specter
That looks like the spring cloud, yellow as the candlelight
And red as the twilight.
The songs of the waves and the hymns of the streams
Are scattered, and the voices of the throngs reduced to silence;
And I can hear naught but the music of Eternity
In exact harmony with the spirit's desires.
I am cloaked in full whiteness;
I am in comfort; I am in peace.
The Beauty of Death: Khalil Gibran
Wanderers Nightsong
Over all the hill-tops
Is Rest,
In all the tree-tops
You can feel
Scarcely a breath:
The little birds quiet in the leaves.
Wait now, soon you
Too will have peace
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
