Poets & Saints

Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 (NIV)  

Two are better than one,  

because they have a good return for their labor:  

If either of them falls down,  

one can help the other up.  

But pity anyone who falls  

and has no one to help them up.

God moves through the people beside me.

Henri Nouwen  

“Community is the place  

where the person you least want to be  

is always present.  

But so is grace.  

It is in this place of friction and forgiveness,  

of celebration and grief,  

that we learn how to love,  

how to be loved,  

and how to discover the face of Christ  

in the face of one another.”

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Mark 4:27 (NIV)  

Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up,  

the seed sprouts and grows,  

though he does not know how.

Grace is at work, even when I can’t see it.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from *Letters to a Young Poet*  

“Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.  

To let each impression and each seed of a feeling  

come to completion in itself,  

in the dark,  

in the unsayable,  

the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding—  

and with deep humility and patience  

to wait for the hour  

when a new clarity is born.”  

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Matthew 16:25 (NRSVUE)  

For those who want to save their life will lose it,  

and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

In surrender, I find rest.

Michael A. Singer, from *The Untethered Soul*  

“Surrender is the highest form of control.  

It is the choice to stop fighting with life  

and start flowing with it.  

You don’t have to fix the world around you.  

You just have to let go of the resistance within you.  

Freedom isn’t in getting what you want—  

it’s in being at peace with what is.”

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Lamentations 3:22–23 (NIV)  

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,  

for his compassions never fail.  

They are new every morning;  

great is your faithfulness.

Your mercy meets me here.

Julian of Norwich  

“Often I wondered why, by the great foreseeing wisdom of God,  

the beginning of sin was not prevented.  

But Jesus answered:  

Sin is necessary,  

but all shall be well,  

and all shall be well,  

and all manner of things shall be well.  

For mercy is not given only when we ask.  

It flows endlessly,  

from the deep ground of love.”

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Zechariah 14:20 (NIV)  

On that day,  

“HOLY TO THE LORD”  

will be inscribed on the bells of the horses,  

and the cooking pots in the Lord’s house  

will be like the sacred bowls  

in front of the altar.

Nothing is too ordinary for wonder.

Annie Dillard, from Teaching a Stone to Talk  

“There are no unsacred places;  

there are only sacred places  

and desecrated places.  

Every step you take is on holy ground.  

The world is filled with the glory of God—  

not in rare moments,  

but in every moment  

we choose to see.”  

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Colossians 2:9 (NLT)  

For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body.

God is not far from flesh.

Richard Rohr, from *The Universal Christ*  

“When God chose to reveal Himself,  

He did it through a human body.  

If we’re to understand the nature of God,  

we must begin with this:  

God is not up there,  

God is down here—  

in the dirt,  

in the skin,  

in the breath of the world.  

Incarnation means that every bit of this life matters.”

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John 1:5 (CSB)  

That light shines in the darkness,  

and yet the darkness did not overcome it.

Your light finds me, even here.

Barbara Brown Taylor, from *Learning to Walk in the Dark*  

“Even when light fades and darkness falls—  

as it does every single day,  

in every single life—  

God does not turn the world over to the dark.  

God is not absent.  

Our sight is just limited.  

Faith is the practice of trusting  

that the light is still there,  

even when we cannot see it.”

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Romans 8:23 (ESV)  

And not only the creation,  

but we ourselves,  

who have the firstfruits of the Spirit,  

groan inwardly as we wait eagerly  

for adoption as sons,  

the redemption of our bodies.

Even my longing is a form of prayer.

St. John of the Cross  

“In the dark night of the soul,  

bright flows the river of God.  

The deeper the longing,  

the more spacious the soul.  

Love is not found in understanding—  

but in surrender.  

And when all else is stripped away,  

Desire alone becomes the door to union.”

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Genesis 2:7 (NRSVUE)  

Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,  

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,  

and the man became a living being.

The breath in me is holy.

Hildegard von Bingen  

“Holy Spirit,  

making life alive,  

moving in all things,  

root of all created being,  

cleansing the cosmos of every impurity,  

washing guilt away,  

anointing wounds.  

You are our true life—  

luminous, wonderful,  

awakening the heart  

from its ancient sleep.”  

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Jeremiah 17:7–8 (NIV)  

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,  

whose confidence is in him.  

They will be like a tree planted by the water  

that sends out its roots by the stream.  

It does not fear when heat comes;  

its leaves are always green.  

It has no worries in a year of drought  

and never fails to bear fruit.

I am rooted in love that never dries out.

Rabindranath Tagore  

“Trees are the earth’s endless effort  

to speak to the listening heaven.  

And every root, every leaf,  

every breath of green  

is a wordless prayer,  

reaching deep into the dark,  

yet always leaning toward the light.”  

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