Well Lily's hounded me to write again...but to be honest, there isn't much that is interesting to write!  Classes are back in full swing and my life is now consumed with Shakespeare, Cesar Vallejo, and boring text book writers.  I am already longing for more time to read Sheldon Vanauken and Mary Oliver and the writers that actually do inspire me!

Listen to how beautiful Mary Oliver thinks, and it's so true:

"Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, 'Stay awhile.'

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, 'It's simple,' they say,

'and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.'"

or the similar theme in The poet visits the museum of fine arts:

Every summer

every rose

opened in perfect sweetness

and lived

in gracious repose,

in its own exotic fragrance,

in its huge willingness to give

something, from its small self,

to the entirety of the world.

I think of them, thousands upon thousands, 

in many lands,

whenever summer came to them,

rising 

out of the patience of patience,

to leaf and bud and look up

into the blue sky

or, with thanks,

into the rain

that would feed their thirsty roots

latched into the earth-*

sandy or hard, Vermont or Arabia,

what did it matter,

the answer was simply to rise in joyfulness, all their days.

Have I found any better teaching?

Not ever, not yet.

Last week I saw my first Botticelli

and almost fainted,

and if I could I would paint like that

but am shelved somewhere below, with a few songs

about roses:  teachers, also, of the ways towards thanks, and praise.

*"Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked...but his delight is in the law of the Lord...He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.  Whatever he does prospers!"

Psalm 1:1-3

I am envious of the way the tree sings of joy and praises so fully.  It reveals glory in all that it does, and it never ceases to fulfill its purpose in the world, providing air and beauty.  The tree and the rose truly understand the joyful realization that it is all for him.  I wish I could live in that sort of wisdom!