“I don’t think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a ‘hypaethral book,’ such as Thoreau talked about – a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine – which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes,” – Wendell Berry, “Christianity and the Survival of Creation” in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community
Month: July 2020
the substance of silence
There is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is a seed of fire whose sudden roots break barriers that keep my heart from being an abyss.
– Thomas Merton, journal entry – 7/4/52
Leaping Novice
“Leaping Novice,” photography by Janet Powers from issue 3 of Hole In The Head Review, coming Saturday 08.01.2020
As a man is, so he sees
Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees. – William Blake
for a friend who died on this day in 2000
For my friend Joe – who died on this day in 2000. I miss you every day.
On the Feast of St. James the Greater
(for Joe C.)
This is where
he would have fished
imagine
him in the dark
gathering gear
stripers transfiguring
the moon’s
light he loses
all balance and
bearings thunder
muffling the dry
night sky
what we heard
is in the mist
blowing over
Ram Island
disappearing
like walks
we’ll never take
do not lose your inner peace
Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, not even if your whole world seems upset. If you find that you have wandered away from the shelter of God, lead your heart back to God quietly and simply.
– St. Francis de Sales
Tattoo by Shug Lescault from issue 2 of Hole In The Head Review.
http://www.holeintheheadreview.com
Look for Issue 3 on 08.01.2020 with wonderful work by Betsy Sholl, Charles Simic, Linda Aldrich, Alice B. Fogel, F. Daniel Rzicznek, Sara Pirkle, Meghan Vigeant, Janet Powers, Greg Clary, Russell Barajas, Michael Hettich interviews Denise Duhamel, and much, much more.