"Start by making your own home a place where happiness and love abound, through your love for each member of your family and for your neighbor. Try to put in the hearts of your children a love for home. Make them long to be with their families. So much sin could be avoided if our people really love their homes."
-Mother Teresa
I have painted a chalkboard on a door downstairs in my home, and I post poetry of wide variety on the door...changing it up every few weeks.
On Tuesday I posted a new poem from Rilke's Book of Hours, and L and I talked about it today. I asked L- Do you remember what God said to you as he made you?
L thought for a big and then told me God said to him "Be careful down there"!
I had no words for that... it was just the best.
You See I Want a Lot
You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.
So many live on and want nothing,
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.
But what you love to see are faces
that do work and feel thirst.
You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.
You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.
--Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)
I am sharing some winter love with Justyn. These photos were taken by my friend Chris Royer who works in the mountains of West Virginia where I go for Hero's Journey Foundation work.
Sweet Darkness
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
~David Whyte
