Hosted by Randy Smit and Rhonda Edgington
In Almighty Love, we live and move and have our being.
This poem discloses that reawakening one can sometimes have of our nearness to glory, the very Loving Presence that holds us together and all things. It can happen in a glance at the end of our rope or can be found in an oily puddle of unexpected anointing. Perhaps most importantly such moments tend to happen outside for many of us… Times when we are somewhere outside the inside of this mysterious and burgeoning Love-House of creation.
May these voices draw you in and out like living breath, beloved, for we live at “creations dawn. The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.” John Muir ~Randy Smit
All That Is Glorious Around Us
(title of an exhibit on The Hudson River School)
By Barbara Crooker
is not, for me, these grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled
overlooks, towering clouds, but doing errands on a day
of driving rain, staying dry inside the silver skin of the car,
160,000 miles, still running just fine. Or later,
sitting in a café warmed by the steam
from white chicken chili, two cups of dark coffee,
watching the red and gold leaves race down the street,
confetti from autumn’s bright parade. And I think
of how my mother struggles to breathe, how few good days
she has now, how we never think about the glories
of breath, oxygen cascading down our throats to the lungs,
simple as the journey of water over a rock. It is the nature
of stone / to be satisfied / writes Mary Oliver, It is the nature
of water / to want to be somewhere else, rushing down
a rocky tor or high escarpment, the panoramic landscape
boundless behind it. But everything glorious is around
us already: black and blue graffiti shining in the rain’s
bright glaze, the small rainbows of oil on the pavement,
where the last car to park has left its mark on the glistening
street, this radiant world.
Barbara Crooker from Radiance. © Word Press, 2005.