There is Really No Death

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There is not one blade of grass,
there is no color in this world
that is not intended to make us rejoice.

~John Calvin

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The moment one gives close attention to any thing,
even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious,
awesome,
indescribably magnificent world in itself.

~Henry Miller

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Men do change,
and change comes like a little wind
that ruffles the curtains at dawn,
and it comes like the stealthy perfume
of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

~John Steinbeck

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Rest is not idleness,
and to lie sometimes
on the grass under trees on a summer’s day,
listening to the murmur of the water,
or watching the clouds float across the sky,
is by no means a waste of time.
~John Lubbock

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The virtues of a superior man are like the wind;
the virtues of a common man are like the grass
– I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.

We should be blessed if we lived in the present always,
and took advantage of every accident that befell us,
like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it.
~Henry David Thoreau from Walden

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If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy,
if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you,
if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand,
rejoice, for your soul is alive.
~Eleonora Duse

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When they would return to one another from their solitariness,
they returned gently as dew comes to the morning grass.

~David Paul Kirkpatrick

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All people are like grass,
    and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
7 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
    Surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of our God endures forever.
Isaiah 40:6-8

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A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

… I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
~Walt Whitman from “Song of Myself”

 

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Lifting the Gauze

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Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted,
and by degrees
the forms and colours of things are restored to them,
and we watch the dawn
remaking the world in its antique pattern.
~Oscar Wilde from The Picture of Dorian Gray

 

Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence.
Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.
~Leonora Carrington

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To Open the Door

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Poetry is the opening and closing of a door,
leaving those who look through to guess
about what is seen during the moment.
~Carl Sandburg

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I seek to unbar the door,
open it a little wider each day
for those who want to look inside
before it is locked up tight
for the night.

From Blossom to Blossom

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There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”
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To Give Life’s Best

For Memorial Day 2014, as the sky cannot stop raining tears for the losses suffered by a few to secure a future for many:

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In great deeds, something abides.
On great fields, something stays.
Forms change and pass;
bodies disappear;
but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls.
And reverent men and women from afar,
and generations that know us not and that we know not of,
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them,
shall come to this deathless field,
to ponder and dream;
and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom,
and the power of the vision pass into their souls.
This is the great reward of service.
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,

–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.

~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889

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For a Day at the Cemeteries

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I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
~Mary Oliver from “When Death Comes”

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A Wonderful View

 

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As I age in the world it will rise and spread,
and be for this place horizon
and orison, the voice of its winds.
I have made myself a dream to dream
of its rising, that has gentled my nights.
Let me desire and wish well the life
these trees may live when I
no longer rise in the mornings
to be pleased with the green of them
shining, and their shadows on the ground
and the sound of the wind in them.
~Wendell Berry ‘Planting Trees’
Deciding whether or not to trust a person
is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree
because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch
or you might simply get covered in sap
and for this reason many people choose
to spend their time alone and indoors where it is harder to get a splinter.
~Lemony Snicket from The Penultimate Peril

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.
~Robert Frost “Birches”

Shedding the Earth Crumbs

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How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
~Robert Frost from “Putting in the Seed”

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As Salty as Tears

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…when he looked at the ocean,
he caught a glimpse of the One he was praying to.

Maybe what made him weep was
how vast and overwhelming it was

and yet at the same time as near
as the breath of it in his nostrils,
as salty as his own tears.

~Frederick Buechner writing about Paul Tillich in Beyond Words