Monthly Archives: March 2025

The milky way, and church bells.

poetry, prayer,

PRAYER (I)

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

-George Herbert

The oddest plant in the garden.

my garden,

I’m holding myself back with all my might, from sharing a dozen flat images in an effort to convey the magnificence in the garden. The plum trees are adorable, short and squat as I’ve trained them to be, dotted with their pristine white blossoms. The Iceland poppies sway gracefully in the breeze, and the anemones are coming on in red, violet and white.

I ate lunch out there near the pineapple guava one day this week, because it was sunny, and much more pleasant than in the house. As I wandered around I gave thanks for all the hardiness of the plants, their constancy in coming back again and again. Most of them look fairly ordinary in their pictures, at least the way I take them — and I really think no one else could love them the way I do.

But I will share the funny and fantastic Dutchman’s Pipe Vine again (above). It’s in the peak of bloom right now, and the leaves just coming out. Mine is the native Californian species, modest in comparison to some exotic ones (a few far-out examples here), which I planted in hopes of attracting the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly. So far I haven’t been aware of success in that way, but I enjoy the plant itself very much. This is what the butterfly looks like:

I’ll be sure to tell you if I ever see one in person!

Man recovers his true nature.

humanity, Lent, quotes,

“Fasting is the only means by which man recovers his true spiritual nature. It is not a theoretical but truly a practical challenge to the great Liar who managed to convince us that we depend on bread alone and built all human knowledge, science, and existence on that lie. Fasting is a denunciation of that lie and also proof that it is a lie.”
….
“Let us understand …that what the Church wants us to do during Lent is to seek the enrichment of our spiritual and intellectual inner world, to read and to meditate upon those things which are most likely to help us recover that inner world and its joy. Of that joy, of the true vocation of man, the one that is fulfilled inside and not outside, the ‘modern world’ gives us no taste today; yet without it, without the understanding of Lent as a journey into the depth of our humanity, Lent loses its meaning.”

-Father Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent

Have You Got a Brook?

Lent, nature, poetry, quotes, ,

This poem seems fitting for the season of Lent, when we make a special effort to lay aside distractions and turn inward — to make a spiritual journey, drawing near to the place where, as Christ told us, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” May we find our brook to be the River of Life, of which He also speaks: “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'”

HAVE YOU GOT A BROOK IN YOUR LITTLE HEART?

Have you got a brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so?

And nobody knows, so still it flows,
That any brook is there;
And yet your little draught of life
Is daily drunken there.

Then look out for the little brook in March,
When the rivers overflow,
And the snows come hurrying from the hills,
And the bridges often go.

And later, in August it may be,
When the meadows parching lie,
Beware, lest this little brook of life
Some burning noon go dry!

-Emily Dickinson