other deepening places
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Don’t be afraid of joy. In hard times, I can see how someone might shun joy’s exuberant embrace. How can I be joyful when… [insert horrific or difficult or sad reality here]? Such thinking isn’t worth a fig, to use the old idiom. I don’t believe that we were made to only indulge in joy…
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Originally posted on My Pastoral Ponderings: This year’s Lenten season begins tomorrow, and with it taking place in the midst of this ongoing pandemic, in which we have already given so much up, I can’t help but think of the opening line from a wonderful poem by Madeleine L’Engle: “It is my Lent to break…
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“Well, I built me a raftand she’s ready for floatin’Ol’ Mississippi, she’s callin’ my nameCatfish are jumpin’,that paddle wheel thumpin’Black water keep rollin’ on past just the same” “Blackwater” by The Doobie Brothers, from What Were Once Vices are Now Habits (1974) I know, I know! The Doobie Brothers and Mary Oliver aren’t talking about…
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Mark Strand’s “Eating Poetry” and Billy Collins’ “Introduction to Poetry” both address the wonder of reading and interacting with poetry. They are probably my two go-to poems for introducing others to the simple joy good poetry can bring to any life. But Mary Oliver’s “That Little Beast” has clawed its way into the poetic fray,…
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Out of the blue, my son Benjamin blessed me with a random gift. No reason. No ulterior motive. Just the choice between another disc for disc golf or a book. As much as I love losing to my sons weekly (it’s hard to believe that I ever held the family course record for Memorial Park…
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“In that day the remnant left in Israel,the survivors in the house of Jacob,will no longer depend on allieswho seek to destroy them.But they will faithfully trust the LORD,the Holy One of Israel.A remnant will return;yes, the remnant of Jacob will return to the Mighty God.” Isaiah 10:20-21, New Living Translation Working our way through…
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“What will your verse be?” Mr. Keating, Dead Poets Society When I officially introduced my students to free verse last week, I knew that Walt Whitman would be on the menu. In my search for a shorter example, I came across the poem I first heard under the wise tutelage of Mr. Keating from Dead…
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On our most recent shopping excursion, my wife shared with me that classic Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem Christmas Bells. I’ve been familiar with the poem for years, more through the variety of interpretations the poem has experienced in song, but the power of Longfellow’s words themselves ring loud and clear. As I sat in the…
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“1ife: the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body” from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/life We have been duped into accepting something as life that by definition is not. Fear, the most infectious disease spreading across the globe, has crippled us. The prescription: isolation. Look at the empty stands of sporting events (where they…
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Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? I apologize for my lack of activity on The Deepening Ground recently. Over the last two weeks, I’ve spent little time nurturing my poetic soul. Rather I’ve finished the flooring in our addition, ripped sixteen foot boards with a friend for the trim, and finished work on my…
the deepening ground 