What a gift each morning to encounter some part of nature... It is a pure gift of beauty, of life. The sunrise can be a reminder of the day's gift because it comes unbidden. We don't produce it. The light is given. The world is reborn each morning, and we are given a whole new time of opportunity. Even if the difficulties are the same we had yesterday, we can tackle them in a new way. Primordial freshness is renewed each morning.
This poem-prayer comes from Philip J. Bennett of Fostoria, Ohio. An excerpt from his letter gives some sense of his journey, which he generously shares with us: "The past six years have been my time of silence -- a time for prayer, a time for thought, a time to listen to God and man. As I listen to God, I receive hope out of inescapable despair; from man I hear mostly a college of confusion, ignorance, sin, arrogance, and ultimate despair, which drives me once again into the Silence to God for assurance and hope ... You are, therefore, an ember in a smoldering fire to me. You may be enough to rekindle a flame ..."
Ineffable Journey
(up to third heaven)
Fluttering wings descend on me,
To calm and cool my anxiety
That rages in my spirit which burns;
For God's outstretched hand it yearns.
Fluttering wings drive the wind;
And by it, to heave I ascend
Where the breath of God falls on me
Like waves of unimaginable ecstasy.
Fluttering wings have carried me
Far beyond the borders of credulity
To where eyes have seen and ears have heard
The reality of the Living Word.
Sometimes
in the stillness of the quiet,
if we listen
we can hear the whisper
in the heart
giving strength to weakness,
courage to fear,
hope to despair ...