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Posts tagged ‘Advent’

Carpentry of Exquisite Beauty

“In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.”― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power…Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”― Abraham Heschel

What pen shall you write with today?
What brush and colors will you swirl on the canvas?
What song to sing loudly and proudly?
What dance will bring you gliding across the floor?

We create our days and our days become our life, one at a time.
Plant seeds of kindness, laughter, joy, compassion, attention, inquiry.
String syllables of poetry and prose.
Weave gratitude, grace, goodness.
Bloom love, peace, light.
Exquisite carpentry.

“As a carpenter can make a gibbet as well as an altar, a writer can describe the world as trivial or exquisite, as material or as idea, as senseless or as purposeful. Words are wood.”― Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poem

Rush of Stillness

“The whole world is beautiful, the art is in the seeing.”― Camille Pissarro

“The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man

Winter sunrise
Crisp air
Delayed by awe
Soft whisper, warm light
Invitation of wonder, pause, attention
Rush of stillness
Urgency of slowness
To see and hear anew
With clarity, gratitude, wonder

“TO LISTEN, TO LOOK Is it all sewn up—my life? Is it at this point so predictable, so orderly, so neat, so arranged, so right, that I don’t have time or space for listening for the rustle of angels’ wings or running to stables to see a baby? Could this be what he meant when he said Listen, those who have ears to hear… Look, those who have eyes to see? O God, give me the humbleness of those shepherds who saw in the cold December darkness the Coming of Light the Advent of Love!”— Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem