The Angels keep their ancient places
The Angels keep their ancient places
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis ye, your estranged faces
That miss the many-splendored thing.
A long and loving look at the universe we inhabit can actually change us. We can become different persons.
Prayer with nature is a passionate listening to the beating heart of the world. It is appreciation. And it is always praise.
Let us plant dates, even though those who plant them will never eat them ... We must live by the love of what we will never see. This is the secret discipline. It is a refusal to let the creative act be dissolved away in immediate sense experience, and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined love is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints the courage to die for the future they envisaged. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope.