Poets & Saints

Romans 12:4–5 (NRSV)  

For as in one body we have many members,  

and not all the members have the same function,  

so we, who are many, are one body in Christ,  

and individually we are members one of another.

I do not walk alone, we belong to each other.

Desmond Tutu  

“My humanity is bound up in yours,  

for we can only be human together.”

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Mark 5:25–34 (NRSV, abridged)  

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.  

She had heard about Jesus and came up behind Him in the crowd  

and touched His cloak, for she said,  

“If I but touch His clothes, I will be made well.”  

Immediately her bleeding stopped;  

and Jesus, aware that power had gone forth from Him, turned and said,  

“Who touched Me?”  

The woman came in fear and trembling,  

fell down before Him, and told Him the whole truth.  

He said to her,  

“Daughter, your faith has made you well;  

go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

In Your presence, healing begins.

Henri Nouwen  

“Jesus heals, not by taking our pain away,  

but by entering into it with us.  

In His presence, our wounds become places where grace lives.”

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1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (NRSV)  

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,  

which you have from God, and that you are not your own?  

For you were bought with a price;  

therefore glorify God in your body.

God dwells in this body, I will honor it as holy.

Hildegard of Bingen  

“The soul is in the body the way sap is in the tree.  

It breathes through every branch,  

moves through every vessel.  

Your body is not a shell.  

It is a sanctuary.”

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Psalm 46:10 (NRSV)  

“Be still, and know that I am God!  

I am exalted among the nations,  

I am exalted in the earth.”  

Beneath the noise, Your breath is still here.

John Main  

“In the silence, we do not pretend to find God—  

we allow God to find us.  

We do not reach for Him with thought or image,  

we simply return, breath by breath,  

to the stillness where He has already been waiting.”

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Isaiah 49:15–16 (NRSV)  

Can a woman forget her nursing child,  

or show no compassion for the child of her womb?  

Even these may forget,  

yet I will not forget you.  

See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;  

your walls are continually before me.

I rest in hands stronger than my own.

Julian of Norwich  

“All shall be well, and all shall be well,  

and all manner of things shall be well.”

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Romans 8:26–27 (NRSV)  

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness;  

for we do not know how to pray as we ought,  

but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  

And God, who searches the heart,  

knows what is the mind of the Spirit,  

because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

When I fall silent, You are still speaking.

Meister Eckhart  

“There is nothing so much like God in all the universe as silence.”

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Exodus 3:1–5 (NRSV)  

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro,  

the priest of Midian;  

he led his flock beyond the wilderness,  

and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.  

There the angel of the Lord appeared to him  

in a flame of fire out of a bush;  

he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.  

Then Moses said,  

"I must turn aside and look at this great sight,  

and see why the bush is not burned up."  

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see,  

God called to him out of the bush,  

"Moses, Moses!"  

And he said, "Here I am."  

Then He said,  

"Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet,  

for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

Every step is holy ground.

Mary Oliver

"Instructions for Living a Life  

Pay attention.  

Be astonished.  

Tell about it."

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2 Corinthians 3:17–18 (NRSV)  

Now the Lord is the Spirit,  

and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  

And all of us, with unveiled faces,  

seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror,  

are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another;  

for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

I am being shaped by grace.

Madeleine L’Engle, from Walking on Water

“We are all still becoming.  

It is not the demands of perfection that move us forward,  

but the quiet, persistent grace of being loved as we are,  

even while we are not yet what we will become.”

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Jeremiah 17:7–8 (NRSV)  

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,  

whose trust is the Lord.  

They shall be like a tree planted by water,  

sending out its roots by the stream.  

It shall not fear when heat comes,  

and its leaves shall stay green;  

in the year of drought it is not anxious,  

and it does not cease to bear fruit.

I live from the deep well within me.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus  

"Be patient toward the difficult, for they are where the angels hide.  

The seeds of change are planted in the dark.  

And when you feel buried, know you are being sown."

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Hebrews 11:1–3 (NRSV)  

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,  

the conviction of things not seen.  

Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.  

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God,  

so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

Even when I cannot see, I trust You are leading me.

Thomas Merton, from Thoughts in Solitude

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  

I do not see the road ahead of me.  

I cannot know for certain where it will end.  

Nor do I really know myself,  

and the fact that I think I am following your will  

does not mean that I am actually doing so.  

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.”

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