Category Archives: beauty

When I Am Among the Trees

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image by Rebekah Choat

image by Rebekah Choat

When I Am Among the Trees
by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

A Thousand Mornings

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image copyright Joel Brotzman 2013

image copyright Joel Brotzman 2013

A Thousand Mornings
by Mary Oliver

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing.

Shadows, Part Six

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image copyright Joel Brotzman

image copyright Joel Brotzman

shad – ow (n):  a relected image

 I find this image, taken by my brother, intriguing.  I’m fascinated with how the trees and shrubs and algae, so much green mingled together, are crowded and hard to distinguish from each other; yet the shadow reflected on the surface of the pond is somehow serene, and shows a crisply clear image of a treetop not itself visible in the picture.

I had a good talk with a good friend last night.  Big, important things are happening in both our lives – so quickly in mine that it’s something of a blur, so slowly in his that there hardly seems to be any progress at all.  At either pace, it’s hard, nearly impossible sometimes, to see things clearly, to find a focal point.

My friend and I serve as sounding boards and mirrors for each other.   We can pour out our jumbled thoughts and mixed feelings and talk things through and share different perspectives until somehow our vision comes a little clearer.  Once in a while we can even see a lovely reflection of a beauty not visible in the current frame of the picture.

What stood will stand by Wendell Berry

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photo by Rebekah Choat

photo by Rebekah Choat

What stood will stand, though all be fallen,
The good return that time has stolen.
Though creatures groan in misery,
Their flesh prefigures liberty
To end travail and bring to birth
Their new perfection in new earth.
At word of that enlivening
Let the trees of the woods all sing
And every field rejoice, let praise
Rise up out of the ground like grass.
What stood, whole in every piecemeal
Thing that stood, will stand though all
Fall — field and woods and all in them
Rejoin the primal Sabbath’s hymn.

~ Wendell Berry

a druid way…

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Brazos Bend 4

a found poem from Frederick Buechner’s Brendan

a druid way of saying God –
the rustling of oak leaves,
the sound of shallow waves against the rocks,
the feel of mist drifting knee deep
over the blue folds and hollows of the hills.

~ Rebekah Choat

I go among trees and sit still

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trees on path to neuschwanstein

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it.  As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

~ Wendell Berry