Poets & Saints

Psalm 42:1–3 (NRSV)  

As a deer longs for flowing streams,  

so my soul longs for You, O God.  

My soul thirsts for God,  

for the living God.  

When shall I come and behold the face of God?  

My tears have been my food day and night,  

while people say to me continually,  

“Where is your God?”

My deepest longing is for You.

St. Augustine  

“You have made us for Yourself, O Lord,  

and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

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John 20:24–29 (NRSV)  

But Thomas, who was called the Twin, one of the twelve,  

was not with them when Jesus came.  

So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.”  

But he said to them,  

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands,  

and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in His side,  

I will not believe.”  

A week later His disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them.  

Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said,  

“Peace be with you.”  

Then He said to Thomas,  

“Put your finger here and see My hands.  

Reach out your hand and put it in My side.  

Do not doubt but believe.”  

Thomas answered Him,  

“My Lord and my God!”  

Jesus said to him,  

“Have you believed because you have seen Me?  

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

These wounds are becoming holy.

Kahlil Gibran  

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;  

the most massive characters are seared with scars.” 

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John 20:19–22 (NRSV)  

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week,  

and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear,  

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”  

After He said this, He showed them His hands and His side.  

Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.  

As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.”  

When He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them,  

“Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Peace is not far off,  

it is already within me.

Thomas Merton  

“We are not at peace with others  

because we are not at peace with ourselves,  

and we are not at peace with ourselves  

because we are not at peace with God.  

When we rediscover the God who dwells within,  

we discover the ground of lasting peace.”

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Psalm 23 (NRSV)  

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  

He makes me lie down in green pastures;  

He leads me beside still waters;  

He restores my soul.  

He leads me in right paths  

for His name’s sake.  

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,  

I fear no evil;  

for You are with me;  

Your rod and Your staff—  

they comfort me.  

You prepare a table before me  

in the presence of my enemies;  

You anoint my head with oil;  

my cup overflows.  

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me  

all the days of my life,  

and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord  

my whole life long.

I am being led back to myself.

Rumi  

“Don’t go outside your house to see the flowers.  

My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.  

Inside your body there are flowers.  

One flower has a thousand petals.  

That will do for a place to sit.  

Sit there.  

Be quiet.  

You are that flower.”

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Genesis 16:7–13 (NRSV)  

The angel of the Lord found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness,  

the spring on the way to Shur. And he said,  

“Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”  

She said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.”  

The angel of the Lord said to her,  

“Return to your mistress, and submit to her.”  

The angel of the Lord also said to her,  

“I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted.”  

And the angel of the Lord said to her,  

“Now you have conceived and shall bear a son;  

you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.”  

So she named the Lord who spoke to her,  

“You are El Roi,” for she said,  

“Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing Him?”

I am seen. I am known. I am loved.

Henri Nouwen  

“Long before any human being saw us, we are seen by God’s loving eyes.  

Long before anyone heard us cry or laugh, we are heard by our God,  

who is all ears for us.  

Long before any person spoke to us in this world,  

we are spoken to by the voice of eternal love.”  

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Matthew 5:14–16 (NRSV)  

“You are the light of the world.  

A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.  

No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket,  

but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.  

In the same way, let your light shine before others,  

so that they may see your good works  

and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

The light I carry is not my own.

William Blake  

Look on the rising sun: there God does live

And gives his light, and gives his heat away.

And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love...

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Isaiah 40:28–31 (NRSV)  

Have you not known? Have you not heard?  

The Lord is the everlasting God,  

the Creator of the ends of the earth.  

He does not faint or grow weary;  

His understanding is unsearchable.  

He gives power to the faint,  

and strengthens the powerless.  

Even youths will faint and be weary,  

and the young will fall exhausted;  

but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,  

they shall mount up with wings like eagles,  

they shall run and not be weary,  

they shall walk and not faint.

God moves slowly, but never late.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin  

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.  

We are quite naturally impatient in everything  

to reach the end without delay.  

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.  

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown,  

something new.  

Only God could say what this new spirit  

gradually forming within you will be.  

Give our Lord the benefit of believing  

that His hand is leading you,  

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself  

in suspense and incomplete.”

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Philippians 3:7–14 (NRSV)  

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.  

More than that, I regard everything as loss  

because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  

For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things,  

and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ...  

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal;  

but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own.  

Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own;  

but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind  

and straining forward to what lies ahead,  

I press on toward the goal for the prize  

of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

I let go, and I fall into grace.

The Cloud of Unknowing  

“Lift up your heart to God with a gentle stirring of love,  

and mean God Himself, and not what you get out of it.  

Do this and nothing more:  

cover the naked intent with a cloud of forgetting—  

forget everything else.  

Let it be enough to simply rest in God,  

not grasping, not reaching,  

but being.”  

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Genesis 28:10–16 (NRSV)  

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran.  

He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set.  

Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down.  

And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth,  

the top of it reaching to heaven;  

and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  

And the Lord stood beside him and said,  

“I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac;  

the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring...  

Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.”  

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said,  

“Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!”

God is here, even in what I overlook.

Annie Dillard  

“There is no such thing as an ordinary place.  

Every place is the intersection of heaven and earth.  

The Creator loves pizzazz and sparkle and everyday dirt.  

If we were to truly pay attention,  

we might see burning bushes all around us.”

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Psalm 131 (NRSV)  

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,  

my eyes are not raised too high;  

I do not occupy myself with things  

too great and too marvelous for me.  

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,  

like a weaned child with its mother;  

my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.  

O Israel, hope in the Lord  

from this time on and forevermore.

In stillness, I remember who I am.

Thomas R. Kelly, from *A Testament of Devotion*  

“Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul,  

a holy place, a Divine Center,  

a speaking Voice,  

to which we may continuously return.  

Eternity is at our hearts,  

pressing upon our time-worn lives,  

warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny,  

calling us home unto Itself.”

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