Easy is a soul word, not a circumstance word. The soul was not made for an easy life. The soul was made for an easy yoke.
(~John Ortberg)

SOMETHING TOLD THE WILD GEESE

Something told the wild geese
It was time to go,
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered, "snow."


Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned, "frost."


All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.


Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.
(~Rachel Field)

God of life,
there are days when the burdens we carry
are heavy on our shoulders and weigh us down,
when the road seems dreary and endless,
the skies gray and threatening,
when our lives have no music in them,
and our hearts are lonely,
and our souls have lost their courage.

Flood the path with light, 
turn our eyes to where the skies are full of promise;
tune our hearts to brave music;
give us the sense of comradeship
with heroes and saints of every age;
and so quicken our spirits 
that we may be able to encourage
the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life,
to your honor and glory.
Amen.
(~St. Augustine)

What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
(~Anne Lamott)

'What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...'

(~Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

when green becomes tomatoes there will be sky and sun and possibly a 
     cloud or two
when green becomes tomatoes there will be leaves and flowers tall and 
     standing straight and someone splashing, jumping, diving down
when green becomes tomatoes there will be wings and something inching, 
     green and small and a sweetly, tweetly chirping song
when green becomes tomatoes there will be round and there will be red 
     and there will be tomatoes (more red than green) (more round than 
     seed) (more on the vine than way deep down)
when green becomes tomatoes
(~Julie Fogliano)

The half-life of love is forever.
(~Junot Diaz)

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time. 
(~John Lubbock)

As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away,--
Too imperceptible, at last,
To seem like perfidy.

A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun,
Or Nature, spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon.

The dusk drew earlier in,
The morning foreign shone,--
A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing,
Or service of a keel,
Our summer made her light escape
Into the beautiful.

(~Emily Dickinson)

Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness. 

(~Pearl S. Buck)

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. 

(~J.R.R. Tolkien)

She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. 

(~Michael Ondaatje)

I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to. 

(~Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. 

(~Kate Chopin)

“Is it not ourselves that cry? Yes, assuredly; and yet the Spirit cries also. The expressions are both correct. The Holy Spirit prompts and inspires the cry. He puts the cry into the heart and mouth of the believer. It is his cry because he suggests it, approves of it, and educates us to it. We should never have cried thus if he had not first taught us the way. . . . There are times when we cannot cry at all, and then he cries in us. There are seasons when doubts and fears abound, and so suffocate us with their fumes that we cannot even raise a cry, and then the indwelling Spirit represents us, and speaks for us, and makes intercession for us, crying in our name.”
(~C. H. Spurgeon, “Adoption –The Spirit and the Cry” (MTP 24, Sermon 1435, p. 537))

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. 
(~Emily Bronte)

All I Need

Some nights all I need is the

neighbor’s porchlight to dance

through nervous aspen leaves.

Seeing this morse code causes me to

fall asleep with hope as the

last thing on my mind.

Thinking that jim-dandy word causes me to

dream of my children’s future,

and of my place in it.

(~John Blase, "The Beautiful Due" blog)

Solitude shows us the way to let our behavior be shaped not by the compulsions of the world but by our new mind, the mind of Christ.
(~Henri J.M. Nouwen, "The Way of the Heart")

"What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well..."

(~Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write. 
(~Annie Proulx)

What the future held for her she didn't know. Of two things only she was certain. There would be children-her own or other people's-and there would be books. 

(~Alice Dalgliesh)

"When I Think of My Father"

It is akin to the guilt

the survivor feels at being

the one who

somehow someway

endured the accident that thieved

the lives of so many others.

That’s how it sometimes

feels when I think of my father.

Why can I give testimony

of this man’s unbroken worship

when so many others are

wrecked again and again

by the men who gave them

their legal names?

I have no answers. I simply limp

along a witness pulled

somehow someway

from the flames

by a flawed good man.

This is not only my story.

This is my song.

(~John Blase: The Beautiful Due Blog)

Even mourning takes practice: resisting the distractions that insulate us from facing up to the tragedy of the world in which we find ourselves, we need to teach our children to mourn for neighbors who bear the brunt of injustice, even though we grieve as those with hope (I Thess. 4:13). Sometimes in this fallen world the best thing we can do is teach our children how to be sad.

(~James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love)

One comfort that I relish is a letter from a close friend. The surprise of the letter in the day's mail, the recognition of her handwriting on the envelope, the ritual of getting settled into my chair and reading and rereading her carefully chosen words.
(~Deborah Chappell)

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned. 

(~Saul Bellow)

That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them! 

(~Connie Willis)

Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds. 
(~Jamaica Kincaid)

There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons. 

(~Stephen Chbosky)

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. 

(~Langston Hughes)

This house is deteriorating. My body is dying. We are subject to the same terrible decay. But worth is not measured in such terms. Once upon a time, God called His creation good. And no curse of sin unwound these words. Gnarled maple trees. Plaster walls. An ordinary woman's ordinary body. All good. To care for these is to say to death, "You are not the end."
(~Christie Purifoy, Roots & Sky)

Then October. Everything feels fresh again. The marigolds and zinnias pass the baton of their colors on to the trees. The sky regains that clarity of blue we only ever see in the fall.
(~Christie Purifoy, Roots & Sky)

"I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone." 
(~J.R.R Tolkien)