The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.
(September, by John Updike)
“You’re glorifying something when you find it beautiful for what it is in itself. It’s beauty compels you to adore it, to have your imagination captured by it…And when it’s a person you find beautiful in that way, you want to serve them unconditionally. When you say, “I’ll serve, as long as I’m getting benefits from it,” that’s not actually serving people; it’s serving yourself through them. That’s not circling them, orbiting around them; it’s using them, getting them to orbit around you…
To glorify others means to unconditionally serve them, not because we’re getting anything out of it, just because of our love and appreciation for who they truly are.
It has been here a week, and I chant our summer mantra…
The only option as I see it, is this delicate weaving of action and celebration, of intention and expectation. Let’s act, read, protest, protect, picket, learn, advocate for, fight against, but let’s be careful that in the midst of all that accomplishing and organizing, we don’t bulldoze over a world that’s teeming with beauty and hope and redemption all around us and in the meantime. Before the wars are over, before the cures are found, before the wrongs are righted, Today, humble Today, presents itself to us with all the ceremony and bling of a glittering diamond ring. “Wear me, ” it says, “Wear me out. Love me, dive into me, discover me,” it pleads with us.
(~from Shauna Niequist’s “Cold Tangerines”)
A palace should have been
the birthplace of a King
(I had no way of knowing).
We went to Bethlehem;
it was so strange a thing.
The wind was cold and blowing,
my cloak was old, and thin.
The turned us from the inn;
the town was overflowing.