Poets & Saints

Exodus 33:14 (NIV)  

The Lord replied,  

“My Presence will go with you,  

and I will give you rest.”

In the pause, God is present.

Macrina Wiederkehr  

“O God,  

help me to believe  

the truth about myself—  

no matter how beautiful it is.  

And help me move  

at the pace of grace,  

that I might not miss  

the quiet visitation  

of your presence  

in the ordinary pause.”  

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Hosea 6:1 (NIV)  

“Come, let us return to the Lord.  

He has torn us to pieces  

but he will heal us;  

he has injured us  

but he will bind up our wounds.”

I return to the God who never left.

Rumi  

“Come, come, whoever you are.  

Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving—  

it doesn’t matter.  

Ours is not a caravan of despair.  

Come, even if you have broken your vow  

a thousand times.  

Come, yet again, come.”  

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Psalm 16:5–6 (NRSVUE)  

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;  

you hold my lot.  

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;  

I have a goodly heritage.

My limits are places where grace meets me.

Hildegard of Bingen  

“Everything that is in the heavens, on earth, and under the earth  

is penetrated with connectedness,  

penetrated with relatedness.  

And it is within the harmony of limits  

that each thing finds its purpose—  

not by striving to be all things,  

but by being deeply what it was made to be.”

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Isaiah 37:31 (ESV)  

And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah  

shall again take root downward  

and bear fruit upward.

God is moving in the unseen roots.

Rabindranath Tagore  

“Trees are the poems that the earth writes upon the sky.  

But their roots—hidden, patient, strong—  

speak the language of trust.  

May your life be like that:  

deeply grounded,  

growing slowly,  

reaching quietly toward light.”  

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Isaiah 38:14 (NIV)  

I cried like a swift or thrush,  

I moaned like a mourning dove.  

My eyes grew weak as I looked to the heavens.  

I am being threatened; Lord, come to my aid!

When I have no words, the Spirit still prays.

Christian Wiman, from *My Bright Abyss*  

“There are prayers that are not prayers  

until they are torn from us.  

There are silences  

more faithful than speech.  

And when all we can offer is a groan,  

we can be sure that God is closer  

than we ever imagined.”  

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Psalm 90:2 (NIV)  

Before the mountains were born  

or you brought forth the whole world,  

from everlasting to everlasting  

you are God.

I belong to the eternal now.

John O’Donohue, from *Eternal Echoes*  

“Time is a relentless river.  

But eternity is not later.  

It is not elsewhere.  

Eternity is the depth of the now.  

The eternal is not beyond us—  

it is within us,  

carried like breath,  

sounding quietly beneath  

the ticking clock.”  

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Matthew 11:28–30 (NIV)  

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,  

and I will give you rest.  

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,  

for I am gentle and humble in heart,  

and you will find rest for your souls.  

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I walk lightly, loved and free.

Mary Oliver, from *When I Am Among the Trees*  

“It’s simple, they say,  

and you too have come  

into the world to do this, to go easy,  

to be filled with light,  

and to shine.”  

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2 Corinthians 4:18 (NIV)  

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,  

but on what is unseen,  

since what is seen is temporary,  

but what is unseen is eternal.

I am carried by what cannot be seen.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin  

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.  

There is a lightness beneath the weight.  

A stillness beneath the noise.  

A deeper life we are always returning to—  

not by looking harder,  

but by trusting more.”  

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Genesis 16:13 (NIV)  

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her:  

“You are the God who sees me,”  

for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

I am fully seen and deeply loved.

Emily Dickinson  

“They say that God is everywhere,  

and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.  

But when the soul is still enough,  

quiet enough,  

present enough—  

even a sparrow’s wing  

can remind us  

that we are not unseen.”

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Habakkuk 3:17–18 (NRSVUE)  

Though the fig tree does not blossom  

and no fruit is on the vines;  

though the produce of the olive fails  

and the fields yield no food;  

though the flock is cut off from the fold  

and there is no herd in the stalls,  

yet I will rejoice in the Lord;  

I will exult in the God of my salvation.

Even now, joy rises in me.

Desmond Tutu  

“Discovering more joy does not, I’m sorry to say,  

save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak.  

In fact, we may cry more easily,  

but we will laugh more easily, too.  

Joy is a discipline.  

Not a denial of pain,  

but a way of holding it with grace.  

It is how we lean into the promise  

that suffering does not have the final word.”

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