Poem
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Between getting the budget lined up for March, paying my regular bills, and working on filing my taxes, I somehow lost the weekend and suffocated my soul. All I wanted to do last night was crawl into bed and just go to sleep, but I took the time to drink from Mary Oliver’s poetry. There’s…
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Originally posted on My Pastoral Ponderings: What is a miracle? There are lots of miracles recorded in the Bible, as this poem reminds us. But, still, what is a miracle, especially in this time that “is not the age of miracles”? Perhaps the greatest miracle of our time is faith – simply trusting in God’s…
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“It is no more possible to live in the future than it is to live in the past. If life is not now, it is never.” Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House Meditations on Modernity By Vincent H. Anastasi 2023 IV. The Life Let this be the day well done: not the timely completion of all…
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“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit Meditations on Modernity By Vincent H. Anastasi 2023 III. The Medicine If I could take the creek to work, I would – hitch a ride with the swans who swam…
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“But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death Meditations on Modernity By Vincent H. Anastasi 2023 II. The…
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“If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity.” George Eliot Meditations on…
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Though you likely won’t find this excerpt from Tennyson’s immortal poem In Memoriam A. H. H. on any top ten list of love poems (by the way, here’s a list I liked), I would argue that section 27 deserves the honor of being labeled one of the most powerful love poems ever written. Tennyson commemorates…
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Admittedly, I should have posted this yesterday to allow you all the time to Sabbath either on Saturday or Sunday with this Wendell Berry wafer. But as these days are full with life and activity, this post had to wait until now. And yet, the timelessness of Berry’s wisdom about “how to be alive” ever…
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Just like last year, I’m returning to some of the unpublished photo poems inspired by images from The Guardian’s Photo of the Day posts that I wrote back in 2019 when I was teaching a semester course in poetry. Having just covered the villanelle form in my AP English Literature class today, and seeing that…
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Once again, My Pastoral Ponderings offers a wonderful poem that I’ve never read before and that ministers life to my soul as part of his Poem of the Week series. Forgiveness of others and ourselves is such a powerful, freeing gift, and yet, one we struggle mightily to give freely. Such a rich post and…
the deepening ground 