You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. ~G.K. Chesterton
Norman Rockwell’s 1951 painting Saying Grace
Chesterton has it right. No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first. Even my breathing, my waking, and my sleeping. Even the brilliance right outside my back door.
Continual and constant thanks and praise to the Creator for all things bright and beautiful, and helping us through the dark times.
Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, with a stubborn tendency to take it all for granted.
As I “dip pen in ink” this morning, join me in saying grace:
He is worthy. Amen and Amen.
Even more so. Ever more now.
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The wild November come at last Beneath a veil of rain; The night wind blows its folds aside – Her face is full of pain.
The latest of her race, she takes The Autumn’s vacant throne: She has but one short moon to live, And she must live alone.
A barren realm of withered fields, Bleak woods, and falling leaves, The palest morns that ever dawned; The dreariest of eves.
It is no wonder that she comes, Poor month! With tears of pain; For what can one so hopeless do But weep, and weep again? ~Richard Henry Stoddard “November”
A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains – a melancholy nature. Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail. ~Henri Frederic Amiel
Leaves wait as the reversal of wind comes to a stop. The stopped woods are seized of quiet; waiting for rain bird & bug conversations stutter to a stop.
…the rain begins to fall. Rain-strands, thin slips of vertical rivers, roll the shredded waters out of the cloud and dump them puddling to the ground. Like sticks half-drowned the trees lean so my eyes snap some into lightning shapes, bent & bent.
Whatever crosses over through the wall of rain changes; old leaves are now gold. The wall is continuous, doorless. True, to get past this wall there’s no need for a door since it closes around me as I go through. ~Marie Ponsot from “End of October”
What is melancholy at first glance glistens bejeweled when studied up close.
It isn’t all sadness~ there is solace in knowing the landscape and I share an inner world of tears.
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The world does not need words. It articulates itself in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted. The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being…
The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds, painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it. The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always– greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon. ~Dana Giola from “Words”
The words the world needs is only the Word itself; we exist because He breathed breath into us, saying it was good.
Whatever we have to say about His Creation pales compared to His it is good
But we try over and over again to use words of wonder and praise to express our awe and gratitude and amazement while painted golden by His breath of Light.
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Some mornings all I do is write down words—cistern, tribal, cached—copying them from sprawled pages of books across my desk, words that call out— glimmerings, cursive, saffron, heartwood—holding me in place as if to say listen, you may need me someday, I might offer you another way toward beauty, or even beyond. ~Andrea Potos “Daily Practices” from The Presence of One Word
I want to make poems that look into the earth and the heavens and see the unseeable. I want them to honor both the heart of faith, and the light of the world; the gladness that says, without any words, everything. ~Mary Oliver from “Everything”from New and Selected Poems: Volume Two
This morning
poem hopes
that even though its lines are broken
its reader
will be drawn forward to the part where blueberries firm against fingers
In the ghostly dawn I write new words for your ears— Even now you sleep. ~Amy Lowell“V” from Twenty-Four Hokku
The blueberry fields are all afire, each leaf an October mosaic.
As chlorophyll wanes, the colors appear by magic, like words selected for a poem which begins as an empty slate.
Each carefully chosen.
Each surrounded by silence becoming more holy when it’s no longer empty.
So much of the beauty of poetry is the silence, a pause between the words.
Like life, there is nothing empty or meaningless about pausing.
Like poet Mary Oliver:
I want to make poems that look into the earth and the heavens and see the unseeable.
I am so awed at your faithful reading and generous sharing of what I offer here.
Even when my lines are broken, or I say again what another has already said much better, yet bears repeating — I too try to write with quiet hands, and see through quiet eyes, out of reverence and awe for what unseeable gifts God has given us.
Thank you for being here with me.
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Just as, when you keep watch on the ground ahead of where your boots kick up the leaves, the path goes vague and blurred, while
if you lift your eyes the far reach of the trail comes lucid as map; so when you look at tomorrow through next year,
the way, otherwise so tangled and burdensome, clears. And if the leaves are, as they likely are,
fallen from the trees around you, then you get to look deeper into things than spring allowed. ~Charles O. Hartman “Autumn Ordinance”
I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers. ~Leif Enger, from Peace Like a River
The air tastes like autumn, quivering on my tongue – no need for pumpkin-spice flavoring to feel the change.
Revel in the gold and bronze tint to the sky, the cinnamon nutmeg dusting of the trees, the heavy sprinkling of hanging dew drops, the crisp and shivery breezes, the new landscape peering through bony branches.
Soon the ground will be frosty instead of dusty, leaving a crunchy carpet rather than shady veil.
October is always a much-needed transition, keeping us fresh gazing at new horizons, reminding us to breathe deeply when life feels shallow, remembering we are immersed in the glory of a new day we have never lived before.
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Now constantly there is the sound, quieter than rain, of the leaves falling.
Under their loosening bright gold, the sycamore limbs bleach whiter.
Now the only flowers are beeweed and aster, spray of their white and lavender over the brown leaves.
The calling of a crow sounds Loud — landmark — now that the life of summer falls silent, and the nights grow. ~Wendell Berry “October 10” from New Collected Poems.
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf How the heart feels a languid grief Laid on it for a covering, And how sleep seems a goodly thing In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain Falters because it is in vain, In Autumn at the fall of the leaf Knowest thou not? and how the chief Of joys seems — not to suffer pain?
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf How the soul feels like a dried sheaf Bound up at length for harvesting, And how death seems a comely thing In Autumn at the fall of the leaf? ~Dante Rossetti “Autumn Song”
If I were a color, I am green, turning to gold, turning to bronze, becoming dust.
If I were a sound, I patter like raindrops and children’s feet. If I were a smell, I would be dry earth soaking up rain. If I were a touch, I am a leaf letting go, landing softly. If I were a taste, I would be warm and bittersweet. If I were a season, I am the wistful goodbye hug of autumn.
But I am none of these, being enough for now; this is enough for now.
Singing in the falling leaves, I will come rejoicing, Singing in the leaves.
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I want to be a passenger in your car again and shut my eyes while you sit at the wheel,
awake and assured in your own private world, seeing all the lines on the road ahead,
down a long stretch of empty highway without any other faces in sight.
I want to be a passenger in your car again and put my life back in your hands. ~Michael Miller “December”
I heard an old man speak once, someone who had been sober for fifty years, a very prominent doctor. He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago that his profound sense of control, in the world and over his life, is another addiction and a total illusion. He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver’s seat. ~Anne Lamott from Operating Instructions
Up north, the dashboard lights of the family car gleam in memory, the radio plays to itself as I drive my father plied the highways while my mother talked, she tried to hide that low lilt, that Finnish brogue, in the back seat, my sisters and I our eyes always tied to the Big Dipper I watch it still on summer evenings, as the fireflies stream above the ditches and moths smack into the windshield and the wildlife’s red eyes bore out from the dark forests we flew by, then scattered like the last bit of star light years before. It’s like a different country, the past we made wishes on unnamed falling stars that I’ve forgotten, that maybe were granted because I wished for love. ~Sheila Packa “Driving At Night” from The Mother Tongue
The moon was like a full cup tonight, too heavy, and sank in the mist soon after dark, leaving for light
faint stars and the silver leaves of milkweed beside the road, gleaming before my car.
Yet I like driving at night… the brown road through the mist
of mountain-dark, among farms so quiet, and the roadside willows opening out where I saw
the cows. Always a shock to remember them there, those great breathings close in the dark.
I stopped, and took my flashlight to the pasture fence. They turned to me where they lay, sad
and beautiful faces in the dark, and I counted them-forty near and far in the pasture…
I switched off my light.
But I did not want to go, not yet, nor knew what to do if I should stay, for how
in that great darkness could I explain anything, anything at all. I stood by the fence. And then
Some of my most cherished childhood memories come from long rides home in the car at night from holiday gatherings. My father always drove, my mother hummed “I See the Moon” in the front passenger seat, and we three kids sat in the back seat, drowsy and full of feasting.
The night world hypnotically passed by outside the car window. I wondered whether the rest of the world was as safe and content as I felt at that moment.
On clear nights, the moon followed us down the highway, shining a light on the road.
Now as a driver at night, transporting grandchildren from a family gathering, I want them to feel the same peaceful contentment that I did as a child. As an older driver, I don’t enjoy driving at night, especially dark rural roads in pouring rain. I understand the enormous responsibility I bear, transporting those whom I dearly love and want to keep safe.
In truth, I long to be a passenger again, with no worries or pressures – just along for the ride, watching the moon and the world drift by, knowing I’m well-cared for.
But of course, I fret about the immense burden I feel to make things right in this dark and troubled world.
I am a passenger on a planet that has a Driver who feels great responsibility and care for all He transports through the black night of the universe. He loves me and I can rest content in the knowledge that I am safe in His vigilant hands.
I am not the driver – He knows how to safely bring me home, even in the rain.
I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam. And though all the start above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see And it’s calling out, “Come run a way! And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea, And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!” The moon approaches my window pane, stretching itself to the ground. The moon sings softly and laughs and smiles, and yet never makes a sound! I see the moon! I see the moon! Part A And it’s calling out, “Come run a way! And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea, And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!” Part B I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam. And though all the stars above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see ~Douglas Beam
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Every October it becomes important, no, necessary to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded by leaves turning; it’s not just the symbolism, to confront in the death of the year your death, one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony isn’t lost on you that nature is most seductive when it’s about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its incipient exit, an ending that at least so far the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain) have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception because of course nature is always renewing itself—
the trees don’t die, they just pretend, go out in style, and return in style: a new style.
3
You’ll be driving along depressed when suddenly a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably won’t last. But for a moment the whole world comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives— red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion, gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations of burning. You’re on fire. Your eyes are on fire. It won’t last, you don’t want it to last. You can’t stand any more. But you don’t want it to stop. It’s what you’ve come for. It’s what you’ll come back for. It won’t stay with you, but you’ll
remember that it felt like nothing else you’ve felt or something you’ve felt that also didn’t last. ~Lloyd Schwarz from “Leaves”
The world wakes up and comes to, with vivid, overwhelming color for a moment before it dies.
The landscape is simply acting out its part, perhaps just pretending. Nothing is really dying, just taking a nap under a brilliant blanket.
Rest well. See you next year.
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A curious Cloud surprised the Sky, ‘Twas like a sheet with Horns; The sheet was Blue — The Antlers Gray — It almost touched the Lawns.
So low it leaned — then statelier drew — And trailed like robes away, A Queen adown a satin aisle Had not the majesty. ~Emily Dickinson
The sky is full of clouds to-day, And idly, to and fro, Like sheep across the pasture, they Across the heavens go. I hear the wind with merry noise Around the housetops sweep, And dream it is the shepherd boys,— They’re driving home their sheep.
The clouds move faster now; and see! The west is red and gold. Each sheep seems hastening to be The first within the fold. I watch them hurry on until The blue is clear and deep, And dream that far beyond the hill The shepherds fold their sheep.
Then in the sky the trembling stars Like little flowers shine out, While Night puts up the shadow bars, And darkness falls about. ~Frank Dempster Sherman “Clouds”
White sheep, white sheep, On a blue hill, When the wind stops, You all stand still. When the wind blows, You walk away slow. White sheep, white sheep, Where do you go? ~Christina Rossetti “Clouds”
The afternoon sky becomes a chenille bedspread, covering over a dying autumn landscape.
If only we could throw such a comforter over our messy human lives.
We all might sleep a bit better…
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Begin the song exactly where you are, Remain within the world of which you’re made. Call nothing common in the earth or air, Accept it all and let it be for good.
Start with the very breath you breathe in now, This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood And listen to it, ringing soft and low. Stay with the music, words will come in time.
Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow. Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime Is richness rising out of emptiness, And timelessness resounding into time.
In the center of my chest, a kindling there in the hollow, as if a match had just been struck, or the blinds snapped up on a sealed room, gold suffusing the air, and through the wide windows, a solstice unfolding, mine for the lengthening days. ~Andrea Potts “On Reading John Donne for the First Time” from Her Joy Becomes
I will not forget, dear harvest moon, to keep you as my singing bowl where I can find your song months from now, even when your reflected light leaks out to tangle up in the weary trees of autumn.
Once the leaves fall, you illuminate even the most humble branches in their embarrassed nakedness.
Call nothing common in the earth or air, Accept it all and let it be for good.
When I too need your warm light in the center of my hollowed chest, I’ll know exactly where to find you, as you sing lullabies, waiting for me to empty.
I’ll not forget you, because you never forget to keep looking for me.
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