Contemplation

Kahlil Gibran

To Those I Love

by Isla Paschal Richardson

If I should ever leave you,

Whom I love

To go along the silent way. . .

Grieve not.

Nor speak of me with tears.

But laugh and talk of me

As if I were beside you there.

I'd come. . .I'd come,

Could I but find a way!

But would not tears

And grief be barriers?

And when you hear a song

Or see a thing I loved,

Please do not let the thought of me

Be sad. . .for I am loving you

Just as I always have. . .

You were so good to me!

There are so many things

I wanted still to do. . .

So many things I wanted to say

to you. . . Remember that

I did not fear. . . It was

Just leaving you

That was so hard to face.

We cannot see beyond. . .

But this I know:

I loved you so. . .

'twas heaven here with you!

Jonathan Carroll, "Outside the Dog Museum"

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love;

the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later

when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.

To approach the cross with too much faith, to stand in its shadow with certain confidence of Easter light, is finally to confront no cross at all, only the unrepentant echoes of our religious noise.

Karl A. Plank

Professor of religion at Davidson College, North Carolina.

"Religion is not a matter of getting individuals into heaven, but of transforming the life on earth into the harmony of heaven."

--Walter Rauschenbusch

Playing with Three Strings

We have seen Yitzhak Perlman

who walks the stage with braces on both legs,

On two crutches.

He takes his seat, unhinges the clasps of his legs,

tucking one leg back, extending the other,

laying down his crutches, placing the violin under his chin.

On one occasion one of his violin strings broke.

The audience grew silent but the violinist did not leave the stage.

He signalled the maestro, and the orchestra began its part.

The violinist played with power and intensity on only three strings.

With three strings, he modulated, changed and

recomposed the piece in his head

He retuned the strings to get different sounds,

turned them upward and downward.

The audience screamed with delight,

applauded their appreciation.

Asked later how he had accomplished this feat,

the violinist answered,

"It is my task to make music with what remains."

-- Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis

After a while you learn the subtle differences

between holding a hand and chaining a soul.

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning

and company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts

and presents aren't promises.

And you begin to accept your defeats

with your head up and your eyes ahead,

with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all your roads on today

because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans

and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns

if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul

instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure,

that you really are strong

and you really do have worth.

And you learn and you learn

with every goodbye you learn . . .

-- Veronica A. Shoffstall

When asked to share her beauty tips with fans,

the beloved actress and humanitarian offered this response,

which was read at her funeral several years later:

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.

For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.

For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.

For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day.

For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.

People, even more than things, have to be restored,

renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed;

never throw out anyone.

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand,

you will find one at the end of each of your arms.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands:

one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others.

-- Audrey Hepburn

When we honestly ask ourselves

which person in our lives means the most to us,

we often find that it is those who,

instead of giving much advice, solutions or cures,

have chosen rather to share our pain

and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion,

who can stay with us in an hour of grief or bereavement,

who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing,

and face us with the reality of our powerlessness,

that is a friend who cares.

-- Henri J. M. Nouwen

in Out of Solitude; Three Meditations on the Christian Life

The bitterest tears shed over graves

are for words left unsaid

and deeds left undone.

-- Harriet Beecher Stowe

People are often unreasonable and self-centered.

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.

Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you.

Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous.

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough.

Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.

It never was between you and them anyway.

-- Mother Teresa

Courage doesn't always roar.

Sometimes courage is the quiet voice

at the end of the day

saying, "I will try again tomorrow."

Anonymous

When you grow weary of the boasts of men,

go to a tree, my friend

one that has stood long patient years

within a silent wood.

Beneath its branches you will find again

a thing long lost.

Trees are content to be

as God created them.

No bough that turns its golden thoughts to autumn

ever yearns beyond a hillside's immortality.

Go to a tree in silence, you will find

in the soft eloquence of bud and leaf

serenity beyond the voice of grief

and faith beyond the reach of humankind.

Man spends his noisy days in search of gain

while trees find God in sunlight, soil and rain.

Anonymous

Looking back on the memory

of the dance we shared,

beneath the stars above,

for a moment all the world was right.

How was I to know

that you'd ever say goodbye?

And now I'm glad I didn't know

the way it all would end,

the way it all would go.

Our lives are better left to chance.

I could have missed the pain,

but I'd have had to miss the dance.

Garth Brooks, The Dance

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.

It sings because it has a song.

Chinese proverb

Music I Heard with You

Music I heard with you was more than music,

And bread I broke with you was more than bread;

Now that I am without you, all is desolate;

All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,

And I have seen your fingers hold this glass,

These things do not remember you, beloved

And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,

And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;

And in my heart they will remember always

They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

Conrad Aiken

O the love of my Lord is the essence,

Of all that I love here on Earth.

All the beauty I see

He has given to me,

and his giving is gentle as silence.

Every day, every hour, every moment,

has been blessed by the strength of his love.

At the turn of each tide

He is there at my side,

and His touch is as gentle as silence.

There have been times when Ive turned from his presence,

I have walked other paths, other ways.

But I called on his name

In the dark of my shame,

and his mercy was as gentle as silence.

Estelle White

If I should go before the rest of you

Break not a flower

Nor inscribe a stone

Nor when I am gone

Speak in a Sunday voice

But be the usual selves

That I have known

Weep if you must

Parting is hell

But life goes on

So .... sing as well

Joyce Grenfell

1910-1979

I think no matter where you stray,

That I shall go with you a way.

Though you may wander sweeter lands,

You will not forget my hands,

Nor yet the way I held my head

Nor the tremulous things I said.

You will still see me, small and white

And smiling, in the secret night,

And feel my arms about you when

The day comes fluttering back again.

I think, no matter where you be,

You'll hold me in your memory

And keep my image there without me,

By telling later loves about me.

Dorothy Parker

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land:

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti

1830-1894

There will be storms, child

There will be storms

And with each tempest

You will seem to stand alone

Against cruel winds

But with time, the rage and fury

Shall subside

And when the sky clears

You will find yourself

Clinging to someone

You would have never known

But for storms.

"Storms"

by Margie DeMerell

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.

Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of; wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air;

Up, up the long delirious burning blue

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace,

Where never lark nor even eagle flew;

And while, with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high, untrespassed sanctity of space

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Fl. Officer John Gillespie McGee

1922-1941

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be the blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

"He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"

by William Butler Yeats

I am standing on the sea shore,

A ship sails in the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.

She is an object of beauty and I stand watching her

Till at last she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says:

"She is gone."

Gone! Where?

Gone from my sight, that is all.

She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her

And just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.

The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me,

not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,

"She is gone",

There are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout:

"There she comes"

- and that is dying. An horizon and just the limit of our sight.

Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further.

Bishop Brent

1862 - 1926

It is not the critic who counts;

not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled

or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man

who is actually in the arena,

whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;

who strives valiantly;

who errs and comes short again and again;

who knows great enthusiasms,

the great devotions;

who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,

and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while

DARING GREATLY

so that his place shall never be

with those timid souls

who know neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

26th President Of The United States

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, superficial relationships, so that you will live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people so that you will work for justice, equality and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that you will reach out your hand to comfort them and change their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with the foolishness to think that you can make a difference in the world, so that you will do the things which others tell you cannot be done.

Author Unknown

Footprints in the Sand

One night I had a dream --

I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord, and

Across the sky flashed scenes from my life.

For each scene I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand;

One belonged to me, and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of my life flashed before us,

I looked back at the footprints in the sand.

I noticed that many times along the path of my life,

There was only one set of footprints.

I also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in my life