First Conversation, “The Practice of the Presence of God”, Brother Lawrence
More on this book. The first time I saw Brother Lawrence was upon the third of August, in the year 1666. He told me God had done him a great…
Category: silence
“Silence is not the contrary of the Word but its guardian”
From “Lieber’s Lament”, Chapter 6, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., George Steiner: As it is written in the learned Nathaniel of Mainz: there shall come upon the earth…
The sound of night – from R Murray Schafer’s “Soundscapes”
“In the special darkness of the northern winter, where life was centered in small pools of candlelight, beyond which shadows draped and flickered mysteriously, the mind explored the dark side…
Elegy For Jane (My Student, thrown by a horse) – Theodore Roethke
Text taken from here. Elegy for Jane (My student, thrown by a horse) I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils; And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;…
“Woman, behold thy son. Behold thy mother”
From Fr Robert Hugh Benson’s Seven Last Words: “THE THIRD WORD Woman, behold thy son. Behold thy mother. Our Divine Lord now turns, from the soul who at one bound…
From “The State”, a short story by Tommy Orange
From The New Yorker, drawn from Orange’s forthcoming novel There There Before you were born, you were a head and a tail in a milky pool—a swimmer. You were a…
Poetry is Beauty’s Voice
Originally posted on Signs of Life:
“Words and measures do not give life; they merely symbolize it” (Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity 48). For any kind of beauty there…
“The silent are never at home in our culture again”
Adam DeVille has a fascinating pair of posts (one here, one here) on Maggie Ross‘ Silence: A User’s Guide. Both posts are worth reading in full (and I must now…
Séamus Sweeney 