changed

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone." 


-Merton

Canadian Poetry

Strong images evoked - poets arising
out of wheat fields
with the words of the French echoing around;
poets with salt in their eyebrows,
blown in from the east-coast wind.
Poets as products
of the indigenous, dark-skinned,
smooth-tongued people who bore this earth before us.
Verses, lines, and words come: a result of
the melodious language and the manner in which they sight the landscape, in
reverence, adoration, affection, intimacy.

They are our mothers.

We, their children.

[awe]

You are mystery and majesty
and a lone tree on a hill.
Restorer of imagination and impulse,
and Restrainer of this depth of feeling
that I deserve not to feel;
Your goodness: ever, inexplicably upon me.
There is a sky, above, enduring
that will always sing: "glory!"

empty heart

Water in the boat is the ruin of the boat,
but water under the boat is its support.
Since Solomon cast the desire for wealth out from his heart,
he didn't call himself by any name but "poor."
The stoppered jar, though in rough water,
floated because of its empty heart.
When the wind of poverty is in anyone,
she floats in peace on the waters of the world.


Mathnawi I