bits and pieces of Everyday

We had our first run since the half (eleven days ago, now) – 30 minutes of uphill – oh joy, and then we got to run back down – glorious views – enervating run.

Here are some pics to balance yesterday’s words, along with a portion of Patrick Kavanagh’s 25 page poem, The Great Hunger:

Mary Meighan read us this portion of Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger, a few times during our days with her in Glendalough.  Yesterday, I read the whole poem.  Here is a piece of it for you:

 

VI

Health and wealth and love he too dreamed of in May

As he sat on the railway slope and watched the children of the place

Picking up a primrose here and a daisy there – 

They were picking up life’s truth singly.  But he dreamt of the

        Absolute encased bouquet –

All or nothing.  And it was nothing.  For God is not all

In one place, complete and labelled like a case in a railway store

Till Hope comes in and takes it on his shoulder –

O Christ, that is what you have done for us:

In a crumb of bread the whole mystery is.

 

He read the symbol too sharply and turned

From the five simple doors of sense

To the door whose combination lock has puzzled

Philosopher and priest and common dunce.

 

Men build their heavens as they build their circles

Of friends.  God is in the bits and pieces of Everyday – 

A kiss here and a laugh again, and sometimes tears,

A pearl necklace around the neck of poverty.

 

He sat on the railway slope and watched the evening,

Too beautifully perfect to use,

And his three wishes were three stones too sharp to sit on,

Too hard to carve.  Three frozen idols of a speechless muse.

 

 

May the bits and pieces of your day surprise you with God’s presence.

When those bits and pieces bring wetness to your eyes may it be the wetness of healing.

The bits and pieces . . . may you savor them today, tonight, and tomorrow.