Monthly Archives: May 2020

Friday morning, the older two of Mary Tobacco’s children, Anya and Essence, have been pitching in on a large, start-from-scratch vegetable garden, plowing the prairie, planting, fencing it in.   Some of the crops will help sustain the family, some will … Continue reading →

Wednesday,   May 27  Gerard Manley Hopkins, s.j.   “God’s Grandeur” “Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” The 19th century Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, revolutionized poetry with his unchained cadences, … Continue reading →

“To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.” Fear and anxious anger may be the primary distraction of this current cluster of years, pretty much all over the world.   St. Ignatius, my mentor of … Continue reading →

Friday, May 22  – –  “being surprised” When I pray from Mark or Matthew or Luke (i.e., the three “synoptic gospels”),  it helps me to treat the evangelist like a poet, to allow the surprise buried in the text to … Continue reading →

Monday May 18 – “Let no one touch this gentle sun  —   In whose dark eye  —  Someone is awake.” Five years ago, a weekly selection of 7 poems, from “A Year of Being Here,” confronted me with a short … Continue reading →

Monday, May 18 “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.” Last year in early March, a friend emailed me some lines from Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Kindness.”  She connects kinship … Continue reading →

Friday, May 15  –  A mother contemplates her daughter “I want her to think of this as a connection rather than a severing . . . “ Some years ago, I sent several of my niece Terri’s compelling poem-stories about … Continue reading →

Wednesday, May 13  “ a billion times told lovelier” Looks like a fine strong spring day — high pressure, breezy, leaves and flowering trees dancing all around.   A good morning to stand still a minute, breathe in deeply, stand still a little … Continue reading →

Monday, May 11  —       “Talking with the Sun” & “The high plains of Pine Ridge, SD” This week begins with late spring sun & its crisp wind gusts.   For me, today’s morning stillness stirs memories of two great … Continue reading →

Monday May 12 — A silence in which another voice may speak Looks like we will be fasting from commencement gatherings this early May. So I pulled a Poetry post from 2014 to remind us of what a normal commencement … Continue reading →