Prayer for a Daughter

Stellar Birth ~ Young Star Clusters

RCW 108 ~ 4,000 Light Years From Earth

NASA Image of the Day 26

Here

They are so lovely, these young women.
Made of stardust, as are we all,
they seem to have come directly from the galaxies:
Swirls of fragility, light years of strength.
Their beauty so radiant, it would seem to be the only necessity:
The soft skin, the gentle curves,
the graceful limbs and the sleek hair.
And yet you ask so much of them:
That they stumble upon death,
contend with loss,
make repairs with scotch tape and paste,
create and recreate their lives on foundations of
painfully shifting plates through which
the boiling waters of Hades bubble up.
Watch over them carefully, hold their hands gently,
wrap your arms around them passionately and protectively,
invite them into freedom, share their burdens.
Oh, please.
Offer them light, surround them with love,
Be Presence to them.


(One of my friends has asked for thoughts and prayers for her daughter who, like mine, has suffered a staggering loss in the past months. This prayer is for them, and for other young women whose optimistic ventures into adulthood have been cruelly marred by catastrophe and its aftermath.)

North Carolina IV

Blue Ridge Parkway Sunrise

Pisgah National Forest

August 2008

North Carolina II

Blue Ridge Parkway Sunset

Pisgah National Forest

August 2008

Three Things

I'm having some camera/computer problems, and I miss posting images. So off to the archives. Apparently three years ago this week, I spent a day at Chautauqua. I actually remember the walk on which I took this photograph.

If you want to respond to my poll in the sidebar, you have another day. If you're in the "Other" category, a comment in the poll post below would be much appreciated.

And for those of you who can't fathom a silent retreat: I mentioned to one of my CPE intern colleagues today that I thought 40 days might do it. "Oh, yeah," he said. He looked as if he were starving.

Good Friday

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise.

In my end is my beginning.

T.S. Eliot

The Four Quartets