i thank You God for most this amazing day

i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- e e  cummings -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Could We With Ink the Ocean Fill

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
      and were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade:
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.

 - Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Mystery of Love

To take away the sin of the world,
to break down the barriers that separate people
     from each other, from God,
     from what is deepest within each one.

He is witnessing to the truth:
     the truth of love,
     the truth of the Love of God
     and the God of love,
     the truth of the importance of each person.

Evil screams and roars.
Truth is a light that shines in the darkness.
Silent, it draws forth what is deepest within us.

In his final hour Jesus lays down his life
     for those he loves,
     and for the unity of humanity.
He goes freely to his death,
     free to give his life,
     free to give us life.

And there in Golgotha . . .

Jesus is at the heart of history,
     the center of humankind
     drawing all people to the God of love.

- Jean Vanier -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Immanence

I come in the little things,
Says the Lord:
Not borne on morning wings
Of majesty, but I have set my feet
Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat
That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod.
There do I dwell in weakness and in power;
Not broken or divided, says our God!
Is your strait garden plot I come to flower:
About your porch my vine
Meek, fruitful, does entwine;
Waits, at the threshold, Love’s appointed hour.

I come in the little things,
Says the Lord:
Yes! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet
Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes
That peep from out the brake, I stand confessed.
On every nest
Where feathery patience is content to brood
And leaves her pleasure for the high emprise
Of motherhood—
There does my Godhead rest.

I come in the little things,
Says the Lord:
My starry wings
I do forsake,
Love’s highway of humility to take:
Meekly I fit my stature to your need.
In beggar’s part
About your gates I shall not cease to plead—
As man, to speak with man—
Till by such art
I shall achieve my immemorial plan,
Pass the low lintel of the human heart.

- Evelyn Underhill - 

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Imperatives

Look at the birds

Consider the lilies

Drink ye all of it

Ask

Seek

Knock

Enter by the narrow gate

Do not be anxious

Judge not; do not give dogs what is holy

Go: be it done for you

Do not be afraid

Maiden, arise

Young man, I say, arise

Stretch out your hand

Stand up, be still

Rise, let us be going…

Love

Forgive

Remember me

- Kathleen Norris - 

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Answer Me With Dancing

I want to be saved . . . and I want to save.  Amen.

I want to be set free . . . and I want to free.  Amen.

I want to be born . . . and I want to give birth.  Amen.

I want to hear . . . and I want to be heard.

Sweetness dances. I want to pipe; all of you dance.  Amen.

I want to make you beautiful . . . and I want to be beautiful.  Amen.

I want to join with you . . . and I want to be joined.  Amen.

I have no house . . . and I have houses.  Amen.

I have no ground . . . and I have ground.  Amen.

I have no temple . . . and I have temples.  Amen.

If you look at me . . . I will be a lamp.  Amen.

If you see me . . . I will be a mirror.  Amen.

If you knock on me . . . I will be a door.  Amen.

If you are a traveller . . . I will be a road.  Amen.

This is my dance . . . Answer me with dancing.

- from The Hymn of Jesus

- in the apocryphal book, The Acts of John

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

My Soul is Swept Up in God . . . in Joy

The great sea
frees me, moves me,
as a strong river carries a weed.
Earth and her strong winds
move me, take me away,
and my soul is swept up in joy.

- Uvavnuk (Iglulik Eskimo, 19th c.) 
- translated by Jane Hirshfield

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

I Find You in All These Things of the World

I find you in all these things of the world

that I love calmly, like a brother;

in things no one cares for, you brood like a seed;

and to powerful things you give an immense power.

Strength plays such a marvelous game --

it moves through the things of the world like a servant,

groping out in roots, tapering in trunks,

and in the treetops like a rising from the dead.

- Rainer Maria Rilke - 

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

God Asked For Charity

God came to my house and asked for charity.

And I fell on my knees and cried,
"Beloved, what may I give?

"Just love,"

God said.

"Just love."

- Saint Francis of Assisi -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

- Wendell Berry - 

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Hope

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.  
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.  
It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.  
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.  
 
- Lisel Mueller -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

The Treasure We Look For Is Hidden

Patience is a hard discipline.
It is not just waiting
until something happens over which we have no control:
    the arrival of the bus,
    the end of the rain,
    the return of a friend,
    the resolution of a conflict.

Patience is not a waiting passivity
until someone else does something.
Patience asks us
    to live the moment to the fullest,
    to be completely present to the moment,
    to taste the here and now,
    to be where we are.

When we are impatient
we try to get away from where we are.
We behave as if the real thing will happen
    tomorrow,
    later and
    somewhere else.

Let’s be patient and trust
that the treasure we look for is hidden
in the ground on which we stand.

- Henri Nouwen - 

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance—

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on,
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

- Rainer Maria Wilke -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

At Dusk

I am a trace of You in the world,

and everything is like a door.

Let us all trace that trace of You,

and through all things go to You.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Mysteries, Yes!

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous 

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the 

mouths of the lambs. 

How rivers and stones are forever 

in allegiance with gravity 

while we ourselves dream of rising. 

How two hands touch and the bonds 

will never be broken. 

How people come, from delight or the 

scars of damage, 

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those 

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say 

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment, 

and bow their heads.

- Mary Oliver -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

When Someone Deeply Listens

When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup

you’ve had since childhood

and watching it fill up with

cold, fresh water.

When it balances on top of the brim,

you are understood.

When it overflows and touches your skin,

you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you

the room where you stay

starts a new life

and the place where you wrote

your first poem

begins to glow in your mind’s eye.

It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you

your barefeet are on the earth

and a beloved land that seemed distant

is now at home within you.

- John Fox -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Want the Change

Want the change.  Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive.  And Daphne, becoming
       a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

- Rainer Maria Rilke -

Sit and Be Still

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

- Wendell Berry -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

With Passion

With

passion pray. With

passion work. With passion make love.

With passion eat and drink and dance and play.

Why look like a dead fish

in this ocean of God?

- Rumi - 

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Exquisite Freedom

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity

In the flush of love's light

we dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only love

which sets us free.

- Maya Angelou -

    Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

The Silk Worm

I stood before a silk worm one day.

And that night my heart said to me,

"I can do things like that, I can spin skies,

I can be woven into love that can bring warmth to people;

I can be soft against a crying face,

I can be wings that lift, and I can travel on my thousand feet

throughout the earth,

my sacks filled

with the

sacred."

And I replied to my heart,

"Dear, can you really do all those things?"

And it just nodded "Yes"

in silence.

So we began and will never

cease.

- Rumi -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Jealous of a Pond

When God said, "My hands are yours," I saw that I could heal any

creature in this world;

I saw that the divine beauty in each heart

is the root of all time

and space.

I was once a sleeping ocean

and in a dream became

jealous of a

pond.

A penny can be eyed in the street

and a war can break out

over it amongst

the poor.

Until we know that God lives in us

and we can see Him 

there,

a great poverty

we suffer.

- Rabia -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

A Lover Who Wants Lovers Near

God is

sweet that way,

trying to coax the world to dance.

Look how the wind holds the trees in its hands

helping them to

sway.

Look how the sky takes the fields and the oceans

and our bodies in its arms, and moves

all beings toward

Her lips.

God must get hungry for us; is God not also

a lover who wants lovers 

near?

- Rabia -

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

To Live in the Mercy of God

To lie back under the tallest
oldest trees. How far the stems
rise, rise
before ribs of shelter
open!

To live in the mercy of God. The complete
sentence too adequate, has no give.
Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of
stony wood beneath lenient
moss bed.

And awe suddenly
passing beyond itself. Becomes
a form of comfort.
Becomes the steady
air you glide on, arms
stretched like the wings of flying foxes.
To hear the multiple silence
of trees, the rainy
forest depths of their listening.

To float, upheld,
as salt water
would hold you,
once you dared.

To live in the mercy of God.

To feel vibrate the enraptured
waterfall flinging itself
unabating down and down
to clenched fists of rock.
Swiftness of plunge,
hour after year after century,
O or Ah
uninterrupted, voice
many-stranded.
To breathe
spray. The smoke of it.
Arcs
of steelwhite foam, glissades
of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—
rage or joy?
Thus, not mild, not temperate,
God’s love for the world. Vast
flood of mercy
flung on resistance.

Denise Levertov

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

War and Victory

Give me no gift of weapons
nor feelings of victory.
I want no triumph.
Let me fight, but lose!

Give me heroic stubbornness in love,
unending heart,
to give friendship without measure,
to forgive without end.

Only grant me strong bright senses
to bring happiness, to help, to hear the needs
of even a pulse-beat,
the call of any person!

- Abraham Joshua Heschel -

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Psalm 90

God acts within every moment
and creates the world with each breath.
He speaks from the center of the universe,
in the silence beyond all thought.
Mightier than the crash of a thunderstorm,
mightier than the roar of the sea,
is God's voice silently speaking
in the depths of the listening heart.

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Wearing Only My Questions

I knock on the door of the universe.

Here, this small villa, this table, this pen.

I ask the universe: What? and Why?

Now weakened, I must remake the world,

One grain at a time . . .

I knock on the door of the universe, asking:

What makes the light of the stars?

What makes the heat of my flesh?

What makes the tear shape of rain? . . .

So much I’ve lost,

I have nothing

Except a fierce hunger

To fathom this world.

Naked, I knock on the door,

Wearing only my questions.

- Alan Lightman -

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
    dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
    As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
    
   No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

                      - (To Christ Our Lord) Gerard Manley Hopkins -

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things – 

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; 

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; 

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; 

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; 

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 

All things counter, original, spare, strange; 

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) 

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; 

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: 

                                Praise him.

         

                        - Gerard Manley Hopkins -

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

  

God Follows Me Everywhere

God follows me everywhere— 
Spins a net of glances around me, 
Warms my sightless back like the sun.

God follows me like a forest everywhere. 
My lips, filled with wonder, are fully numb, dumb 
Like a child who blunders upon an ancient holy place.

God follows me like a shiver everywhere. 
The desire in me is for rest; the demand within me is: Rise up,
See how prophetic visions lie neglected in the streets!

I wander with my reveries as with a secret
In a long corridor through the world— 
And sometimes I see, high above me, the faceless face of God.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel -

     Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?

Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?

 Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Who are you, God?

Most high, most good,
most potent, most omnipotent;
most merciful, yet most just;
most hidden, yet most present;
most beautiful, yet most strong,
stable, yet incomprehensible;
unchangeable, yet all-changing;
never new, never old;
all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not;
ever working, ever at rest;
still gathering, yet nothing lacking;
supporting, filling, and overspreading;
creating, nourishing, and maturing;
seeking, yet having all things.

- Saint Augustine -

     Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Our Hearts Are Ever Restless

You have formed us 

for Yourself, and so our hearts 

are ever restless till they find 

their rest in You.

How, O God, will I find my rest in You? When 

will You come flowing to my heart that it may be 

absolutely drenched, that, drunk with you, I may 

forget my sorrows, knowing only your embrace, 

my one and only good, O lover of humankind? 

- Saint Augustine of Hippo -

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

All Good Things Are Held Intricately Bound

Best belovéd, all good things

are held intricately bound to one another. 

Prayer is bound to love, and love to joy. 

Joy avails meekness, and meekness feeds humility. 

Humility leads to service, just as service offers hope. 

Hope shores up our faith, and faith obtains obedience, 

which becomes a newfound liberty.

- Saint Makarios of Egypt - 

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

The Whole World is Secretly on Fire

I will try like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can one be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can we dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?

- Thomas Merton -

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Such Love Does the Sky Now Pour

Such love does

the sky now pour,

that whenever I stand in a field,

I have to wring out the light

when I get

home.

- Saint Francis of Assisi -

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Praying

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be 

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few 

small stones; just 

pay attention, then patch 

a few words together and don’t try 

to make them elaborate, this isn’t 

a contest but the doorway 

into thanks, and a silence in which 

another voice may speak. 

—Mary Oliver

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

But the silence in the mind

But the silence in the mind

is when we live best, within 

listening distance of the silence 

we call God. This is the deep 

calling to deep of the psalmwriter, 

the bottomless ocean 

We launch the armada of 

our thoughts on, never arriving. 

It is a presence, then, 

whose margins are our margins; 

that calls us out over our 

own fathoms. What to do 

but draw a little nearer to 

such ubiquity by remaining still? 

—R.S. Thomas

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Open

God, whose love and joy 

are present everywhere, 

can’t come to visit you 

unless you aren’t there. 

—Angelus Silesius

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

    

The Madness of Love

The madness of love

is a blessed fate;

and if we understood this

we would seek no other:

It brings into unity

what was divided,

and this is the truth:

Bitterness it makes sweet,

It makes the stranger a neighbor,

And what was lowly it raises on high.

- Hadewijch of Antwerp

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

God Calls Us

"I won't take no for an answer,"

God began to say

to me

when she opened her arms each night

wanting us to

dance.

- Saint Catherine of Sienna - 

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Words

They

can be a great help -- words.

They can become the Spirit's hands

and lift and

caress

you.

- Meister Eckhart

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Living Completely

I'm still discovering,

right up to this moment, 

that it is only by living completely in this world 

that one learns to have faith. 

I mean living unreservedly 

in life's duties, problems, 

successes and failures, 

experiences and perplexities. 

In so doing, 

we throw ourselves completely 

into the arms of God.

  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Wild Forces

There are beautiful wild forces within us.

Let them turn the mills inside

and fill

sacks

that feed even

heaven.

- Saint Francis of Assisi -

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

The Hope of Loving

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?

I think it is the hope of loving,

or being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey

to find its source, and how the moon wept

without her lover's warm gaze.

We weep when the light does not reach our hearts. We wither

like fields if someone close

does not rain their

kindness

upon

us.

- Meister Eckhart -

    Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

If You Love

You might quiet the whole world for a second

if you pray.

And if you love, if you

really love,

our guns will

wilt.

- St. John of the Cross -

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Ash Wednesday

Love is

the perfect stillness

and the greatest excitement, and most profound act,

and the world is almost as complete

as His name. 

- Rabia -

Artist: Maureen L. White, www.urbanpasturesart.com