WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
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| Papa's Coming ~ 1874
See Mother up on the porch, in a red dress? Thanks to Gerry for pointing out this endearing detail! Print attributed to Charles Armstrong & Co. Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress |
You just never know who might be out there waiting to greet you with open arms. Could it be Mama or Papa? A darling daughter or a prodigal son? Could it be Happiness or Kindness or Clarity of Thought? Each of the following authors have personified such possibilities. The reader's task: open your mind to optimism, open your heart to hope, look all around, and listen closely. Keep your arms open, ready for that hug!
"You must always be ready for something to come bursting
Through the far edge of a clearing, running toward you,
Grinning from ear to ear
And hoarse with welcome."
~ David Wagoner ~
from the poem "Staying Alive"
#2 ~ Happiness
"Ever since happiness heard your name,
it has been running through the streets trying to find you."
~ Hafiz ~
#3 ~ Happiness "Happiness turned to me and said – 'It is time. It is time to forgive yourself for all of the things you did not become. It is time to exonerate yourself for all the people you couldn’t save, for all the fragile hearts you fumbled with in the dark of your confusion. It is time, child, to accept that you don’t have to be who you were a year ago, that you don’t have to want the same things. Above all else, it is time to believe, with reckless abandon, that you are worthy of me, for I have been waiting for years.' ”~ Bianca Sparacino ~
Happiness
#4 ~ Forgiveness & Mercy So when you wander far from the fold of God, or when you live in such a small way because you don’t trust that you are loved and worthy to be loved, know this: that all the forgiveness and mercy and reconciliation of God is already yours it will not be taken away as a punishment and it will not be granted as a reward, it is yours no matter what. When God sees you, God is filled with compassion. Even if you are still trying to get over, even if you’re not ready, even if you truly have turned a corner and started to become the woman God intended you to be, even if you have never felt well-loved, even if you can’t forgive yourself. Even if you have never really told the whole truth. Even if you aren’t interested in it. All the love and mercy of God is running toward you. The DJ has been hired and the dancing begun and the feast prepared before you even walked in this door.~ Nadia Bolz - Weber ~
from Slightly Off-Brand Children
A sermon on the Prodigal Son
for inside the women's prison
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| The Prodigal's Return ~ 1920s
by Ambrose Dudley (1867 - 1951) |
" . . . kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend."
~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems
#5 ~ Clarity of Thought
Winter Syntax
A sentence starts out like a lone traveler
heading into a blizzard at midnight,
tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face,
the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.
There are easier ways of making sense,
the connoisseurship of gesture, for example.
You hold a girl's face in your hands like a vase.
You lift a gun from the glove compartment
and toss it out the window into the desert heat.
These cool moments are blazing with silence.
The full moon makes sense. When a cloud crosses it
it becomes as eloquent as a bicycle leaning
outside a drugstore or a dog who sleeps all afternoon
in a corner of the couch.
Bare branches in winter are a form of writing.
The unclothed body is autobiography.
Every lake is a vowel, every island a noun.
But the traveler persists in his misery,
struggling all night through the deepening snow,
leaving a faint alphabet of bootprints
on the white hills and the white floors of valleys,
a message for field mice and passing crows.
At dawn he will spot the vine of smoke
rising from your chimney, and when he stands
before you shivering, draped in sparkling frost,
a smile will appear in the beard of icicles,
and the man will express a complete thought.
["The Imperial Messenger" by Kafka tells a similar story]
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| The Return of Prodigal Son ~ 2009
by Iszchan Nazarian (b. 1946) Such a great, beseeching visual of this parable! |
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, April 14
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THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
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www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
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KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com
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