Put you ear down close to your soul and listen hard.
-Anne Sexton

We dance round in a ring and suppose
but the Secret sits in the middle and knows
-Robert Frost

Words.

Emerson once said "Every word was once a poem."
http://www.emersoncentral.com/poet.htm

Hemingway when facing writer's block would say that "All you have to do is write one true sentence" 

 A Moveable Feast. "I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.'
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/ernest-m-hemingway

What is my true sentence for this day made of precious words that contain distilled ideas as simple or magnificent as a poem ?

What is my life story comprised of sentences that others may choose to write and remember me by ?

What are the words I will have when I meet God ?

Or more likely, what are the words God will have for me ?

What is your one true sentence ?

Perhaps John:  Chapter One. Verse One.

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome^a it


Words are important. The words we choose to say or write.  The words that we let evolve before making them public.  The words that by pass all human decorum and filters that insult, praise or attempt to describe the most complex of emotions and anger that might be better left unsaid for the time being....or forever. 

Which words have you've spoken that you immediately wanted to take back but can never do so ?

Which words are true as a arrow that you will live and die by them whatever the cost ?

What actions have you taken, what sights have you seen, what emotions have you experienced that can words can't accurately describe ?

What works of art, music and literature provide the perfect emotional state that words can never convey?

What truths have come from the mouths of your children that shock you back to living in the present with a newfound sense of appreciation for the value of being a parent ?

What is truth to you ? Can it be covered completely in a word or sentence ?  Or does it reside in your heart informing each moment until your dying day?

What words do you use to comfort others ?  Are they true ?  Are they loving ?  Are they useful ?  Are they condescending without meaning to be ?  Are they just the best you can do at the time ?

Do we throw words around without thought or consequence ?

Do we hold our words for just the right time and then find that the moment for them has passed ?

From D. Martyn LLoyd Jones "The Life of Joy" An exposition of Phillipians 1 and 2

Ah, my dear friend, no man lives to himself in this world.  What you and I do in the time of adversity and trouble is going to affect many others.  Is not this the one way to face life and it's troubles and tribulations... to see in it an opportunity of witnessing for Christ ? When the blow descends, say to yourself, here is a grand opportunity.  There will be people who are going to watch me, they know I am a church member and that I call myself a Christian, so they will look and say, 'Lets 's see how he stands up to this. Let's watch her, let's listen to their words.' And their is your opportunity to testify to the gospel.

Poetry means taking control of the language in your life.
-J. Jordan

"This is the great mystery of the Gospel in the blood of Christ, that those who sin every day should have peace with God all their days."
- John Owen

Two excellent books from Plough Publishing House...Plough.com

The Gospel in Tolstoy: Selections from His Short Stories, Spiritual Writings and Novels

and

The Gospel in Dostoyevsky: Selections from His Works

RIP Guy Clark....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erOGYbUc1VU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buf6P0V45rg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS6VixNGgqg

...and his fellow song traveller TVZ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zprRZ2wFQD4

An  interesting thought about mindfulness.

To quote Dalai Lama:

“Man surprised me most about humanity.

Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.

And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;

the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;

he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

A quick summary of The Pilgrims Progress from Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress

Link for the Cloud Appreciation  Society as mentioned in the May 8th, 2016 Sunday NY Times Magazine:

Basically, if you are going to lay down in a field during the day to look at and appreciate cloud formations, you want to be with someone that has imagination and appreciation for God's handiwork...but that's just me.


https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

Each Sunday the New York Times Magazine contains a poem.

The Poem for the May 8th, 2016 issue is pasted below:

Vall de Núria’

By ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS MAY 6, 2016

Along with the epic and the dramatic play, the lyric was one of the earliest forms of poetry: a song of personal emotion, sung by a single voice to the accompaniment of a strummed instrument, a lyre. For a long time the lyre itself has been implied, but the best lyric poems still sound like songs. Poem selected by Matthew Zapruder.

Credit Illustration by R. O. Blechman

 

 

Vall de Núria

The white rose. The celestial silence.
The lake of light. The bed-like inner thigh
Of empyrean buttermilk and gold,
Call it what you will, it wakes me tonight.
Heaven reheavens. And the mind’s prelude
To the touch of your lips on my forehead,
On my neck, our drowned echoes celloing
In the dark like flames drawn on the ocean,
Is not the mind’s prelude but its heaven.
How somewhere not in Spain there’s a mountain
Borrowing your name, my soul is its snow,
And so in the summer I am nothing,
When all I want to do is lay my head
Down, lay my head down on the naked slope
Of your chest and listen there for my heart.

 

Matthew Zapruder is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently “Sun Bear.” He teaches poetry at Saint Mary’s College of California and is editor at large at Wave Books. Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the winner of a Whiting Award. His second collection of poetry, “Heaven,” was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux last year.

Links to Poems of Pablo Neruda.
http://www.best-poems.net/pablo_neruda/index.html

http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poems/best/pablo_neruda

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4026.Pablo_Neruda

http://www.yourtango.com/2013197753/love-stories-5-love-poems-pablo-neruda-everyone-should-read

http://www.poemhunter.com/pablo-neruda/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/pablo-neruda



Links to Poems of Rumi.
http://www.khamush.com/poems.html

http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/rumipoetry1.html

http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/rumilove.html

http://www.khamush.com/love_poems.html

http://www.khamush.com/passion.htm

Best First Lines From Novels.
http://americanbookreview.org/100bestlines.asp

Famous First Lines of Poems.
http://www.allgreatquotes.com/first_lines_poems.shtml

Poetry begins with a lump in the throat...Robert Frost