#PoetryThursday “As Dust is Blown”

AS DUST IS BLOWN

 

The structures and orders of men

Winnow before the fiat of Nature:

Springtime urges itself upon the building

In which I stay, built by some past creature.

 

And now this building, upon which Spring

So fatally breaks, is owned by others,

Whose hold will try to close and commit

To whose governance and strictures and smothers

The lives of those whose sway they aim to own.

One brick structure amidst a season

Fatally arriving as untold aeons

Before it have ordained; as dust is blown

Upon Egypt, or a street, or a mist rises

Upon a grassy yard, a clover grows,

An alarm sounds upon a human crisis

A river or a glacier flows–

A human or Divine being perhaps silently knows

By Rev. David Fekete

http://swedenborgiancommunity.org/content.cfm?id=3272

#FridayFeeling “On Children” @CinciMUSEchoir

https://youtu.be/NwYV96a3GhQ

On Children
 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, 
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 
and He bends you with His might 
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Poetry in Honor of Friends

“Fairy Tales” by Chester Swor

It seems wherever I go
People come into my life or go out of it
Touching me where I feel
Then leaving me only a memory
Like the Gossamer fairy tales of children –
Easily forgotten
And I wasn’t through knowing them.

How do I know
Who I am seeing for the last time?
How do you halt your life to gather and keep all
Those around you that you’ve ever known?
And how do you keep fairy tales from losing their magic?

So come
Brush against the walls of my life
And stay long enough for us to know each other
Even though we’ll have to part sometime
And we both know
The longer you stay
The more I’ll want you when you are gone.

But come anyway
For fairy tales are the happiest stories we read
And great books are made of little chapters.

#FridayFun Garden Variety Poetry

A Community Garden limerick:

There once was a woman who gardened,

Her plants grew in soil that hardened,

She vowed to bring unity;

Form a community,

And make good soil you can grow chard in!

(C) Maggie Panyko 2018

Saturday, 5/26/18, at 9 am, we plant our garden. RSVP to newchurchofmontgomery@gmail.com today if you are coming.

Bring trowels in you have ’em.

#ArborDay: Visit us this weekend in “Tree City” Glendale, Ohio

“I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree…” Read the rest of this poem by Joyce Kilmer at Poetry.com

Come visit us this Sunday:

• at 9:30 for Study Group, 10:30 am for Hospitality and 11 am for Worship
• with Guest Minister, Rev. Dagmar Bollinger

at our rented “home” the Glendale New Church, in Glendale, OH; designated “a Perennial Tree City” by the National Arbor Day Foundation.

#Tunesday “A Psalm of Life” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

…from the poem, A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

https://youtu.be/CcTHLgIcQTk

#Tunesday #RobertFrost “Stopping by Woods…”

As we await our first snowfall, listen to this lovely musical meditation by Randall Thompson on Frost’s work, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening“.  To learn about Robert Frost’s connection to Swedenborg, read Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete’s article in the November edition of The Messenger on “Robert Frost’s Critical Appropriation of Emanuel Swedenborg’s Theology”.

#EndangeredSpeciesDay Thou Shalt Not Kill…Clover!

Running Buffalo Clover, Photo by USFWS; Sarena Selbo

According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Running Buffalo Clover is an endangered species in Hamilton, County, Ohio.

It’s soft on our feet, great for high traffic areas and fixes nitrogen in the soil.

Do you use herbicides? Instead, let’s help our bees, our lawns, and remember our commandments!

The nearest dream recedes unrealized.
The heaven we chase,
Like the June bee
Before the schoolboy,
Invites the race,
Stoops to an easy clover,
Dips–evades–teases–deploys–
Then to the royal clouds
Lifts his light pinnace,
Heedless of the boy
Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.

Homesick for steadfast honey,–
Ah! the bee flies not
Which brews that rare variety.

                    ~Poem by Emily Dickinson, via the Atlantic