September 2, 2012

Sunday, the blessing day, and today the blessing will be sharing it with family.  Looking out my window this morning, I don't see much.  It's so hot and humid the window is all foggerd up.  I see the tracks of bugs and geckos in the moisture.  At the top of the window it a nearly white sky with only a few patches of vibrating blue.  Everything is still, the lace of some leaves just barely fluttering.  Even the cane looks kind of limp with heat and humidity. and you know that cane can endure just about anything!

Splendor

One day it's the clouds,
one day the mountains.
One day the latest bloom
of roses - the pure monochromes,
the dazzling hybrids - inspiration
for the cathedral's round windows.
Every now and then
there's the splendor
of thought: the singular
idea and its brilliant retinue -
words, cadence, point of view,
little gold arrows flitting
between the lines.
And too the splendor
of no thought at all:
hands lying calmly
in the lap, or swinging
a six iron with effortless
tempo.  More often than not
splendor is the star we orbit
without a second thought,
especially as it arrives
and departs.  One day
it's the blue glassy bay,
one day the night
and its array of jewels,
visible and invisible.
Sometimes it's the warm clarity
of a face that finds your face
and doesn't turn away.
Sometimes a kindness, unexpected,
that will radiate farther
than you might imagine.
One day it's the entire day
itself, each hour foregoing
its number and name,
its cumbersome clothes, a day
that says come as you are,
large enough for fear and doubt,
with room to spare: the most secret
wish, the deepest, the darkest,
turned inside out.

Thomas Centolella

For all this . . . the blessing of such splendor, we are grateful!  An entire day, come as you are, if your frightened, exhausted, overwhelmed, come to all this splendor and be at ease.  Look around, even the sky changes hourly, and we do too.  Today the hottest sun, the whitest clouds, the song of the cardinal, the screams of the jays, all will change, turning hourly to the next hour, all the day we have spread out before us, and all questions, all moods, all beauty, even all the doubt and fear, is all part of the come-as-you-are day, and the night will come bringing its own questions without answers, and tomorrow, if we are lucky, another day to be part of all the changes that go on hourly for our whole entire life!!