"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