angelbirdflies

A Gift Of Gratitude  by Brother David Steindl-Rast    You think this is just another day in your  life?  It’s not just another day; it’s the one day that is given to you… today It’s  given  to you. It’s a gift. It’s the only gift that you have right now, and the one appropriate response is gratefulness. If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to respond as if it were the first day of your life, and the very last day, then you will have spent this day  very well. Begin by  opening  your eyes and be surprised that you have eyes you can open, that incredible array of colors that is constantly offered to us for pure enjoyment. Look  at the sky. We so rarely look at the sky. We so rarely note how different it is from  moment to moment  with clouds coming and going. We just think of the weather, and even of the weather we don’t think of all the many nuances of weather. We just think of good weather and bad weather. This da

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH By Maya Angelou  We, this people, on a small and lonely planet Traveling through casual space Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns To a destination where all signs tell us It is possible and imperative that we learn A brave and startling truth  And when we come to it To the day of peacemaking When we release our fingers From fists of hostility And allow the pure air to cool our palms  When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lie in identical plots in foreign soil  When the rapacious storming of the churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in the good, clean breeze  When we come to it When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders And children

SINGULARITY by Marie Howe            (after Stephen Hawking) Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity we once were? so compact nobody needed a bed, or food or money —  nobody hiding in the school bathroom or home alone pulling open the drawer where the pills are kept. For every atom belonging to me as good Belongs to you.    Remember? There was no    Nature .    No   them .   No tests to determine if the elephant grieves her calf    or if  the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French; would that we could wake up   to what we were — when we  were  ocean    and before that  to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was liquid and stars were space and space was not at all — nothing before we came to believe humans were so important before this awful loneliness. Can molecules recall it? what once was?    before anything happened? No I, no We, no one. No was No verb      no noun only a tiny tiny dot brimming with  is is is is is

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies  are not starving someplace, they are starving  somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.  But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.  Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not  be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not  be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women  at the fountain are laughing together between  the suffering they have known and the awfulness  in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody  in the village is very sick. There is laughter  every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,  and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.  If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,  we lessen the importance of their deprivation.  We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,  but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have  the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless  furnace of this world. To make injustice the only  measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.