heart

Arise thankful

a new day doesn’t mean
forgetting yesterday
but simply letting it go
not to dwell in memories
but to cherish each one
as it pops up and surprises us
and then release it with a smile

the birds are singing of now
our hearts beat of the present
the past is a muted background
enhancing our carpe-diem lives
dawn paints the scene of today
and invites us to live beautifully
to be the artists of our own souls

Terri Guillemets

Realm of sorrow

“Another call from the spiritual universe is to the realm of sorrow. We are not good for much until our hearts are broken. I know of no more pathetic object in time than a man or woman who has come to middle life, still heart-whole. It seems as if they had been overlooked or forgotten in the great curriculum of life.

“Sorrow cleanses our vision of misty humors, restores our spiritual myopia, so that we get a clear, long-range outlook upon the verities, the imperishable substances of the inner life.

“He has lived poorly who has come to mature years and has not been touched by world-pain; who has not heard the sighing and the groaning of the millions; who has not at least stepped back a little way into the awful shadow of the world’s spiritual sorrow; known something of its shame and agony for sin; its terrors of an avenging conscience; its fear of angry gods; its shivering dread in presence of an unknown eternity.

“Unless called now and then into the stillness and shadow of this common experience of sorrow, how would we ever be healed of our folly for the getting and having of things? What ministry of consolation and strength could we have among the sinful, the suffering, and the broken-hearted!”

—Rev. James H. Ecob, D.D. (1844–1921), “The Call of the Universe,” sermon, 1904