Monday, February 18, 2013

Did the Inner Dome of Heaven Fall?



Photos of Meteorite Falling Over Urals' Chelyabinsk

"Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen."
                                     Excerpt from the poem, Birches, by Robert Frost


Clean up after Meteorite Falls to Earth in Siberian town

Cosmic Activity


 

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Be your true self - Be cold in winter



"[Merton] ate, worked, walked in the woods and prayed. In the winter he was cold and in the summer he was hot. And that is the true self. It is the self that is nobody, that is ordinary and poor.  It is this ordinary self that is extraordinary for it is this ordinary self one with the moment, one with concrete reality of everyday life, that is the self God creates, the poor self made rich in the poverty of the cross."

"Merton's message is that each of us lives in the hermitage of our daily self. Beneath all our achievements, plans, travels, and conquests we have but life."

page 113, Merton's Palace of Nowhere by James Finley

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Rural Route Mail


Here's a poem for those of us who grew up in the country and addresses were assigned Rural Route numbers. We lived on Rural Route #4, I believe.  The poem is by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laurette 2004-06,  and appeared in Sunday's Herald Times.

Christmas Mail

Cards in each mailbox,
angel, manger, star and lamb,
as the rural carrier,
driving the snowy roads,

hears from her bundles

the plaintive bleating of sheep,
the shuffle of sandals,
the clopping of camels.
At stop after stop,
she opens the little tin door
and places deep in the shadows
the shepherds and wise men,
the donkeys lank and weary,
the cow who chews and muses.
And from her Styrofoam cup,
white as a star and perched
on the dashboard, leading her
ever into the distance,
there is a hint of hazelnut,
and then a touch of myrrh.



Photo credit to Hilary Henegar