Holy

I had a little trouble with my own Round Robin Photo Challenge: Holy. I worked on one image for a couple of days and then changed my mind. Then I tried to choose just one other. Then I gave up and decided to go for some undefined number, which turned out to be four. The original choice didn't make the final cut. Please be sure and visit all the entries (and click on the photos!); maybe the other photographers were more discriminating.

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The cloisters of the Benedictines, who've been with us for fifteen centuries and vow lives of stability; the exquisite craftsmanship of their Italian stonecutter descendants, who have left their handprints all over the cemetery where I walk; birds on the water, on the beach, and on the move. All holy.

Benedictine Monastery

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer's end. In time's maze

over the fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed's marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear,

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear. What we need is here.

~ Wendell Berry ~

Faith, Hope, and Charity (Gravestone)

"They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time."~ Henry Beston