how is it so easy for you
to be kind to people he asked

milk and honey dripped
from my lips as i answered

cause people have not
been kind to me

– milk and honey, rupi kaur

Song of the Open Road, I

by Walt Whitman

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

“The exploration of heaven shall also include our knowing of each other. How could it not? How can love be complete without the freedom to be naked and unashamed? More than unashamed, we shall be celebrated. It is one of the sorrows of our present life: the separation we feel even from those closest to us. Married people can be the loneliest on earth, not for some failure of the marriage, but because they have tasted the best there is of human relationships and know it is not all it was meant to be.”

-Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance

“One day soon we will round a bend in the road and our dreams will come true. We really will live happily ever after. The long years of exile will be swept away in the joyful tears of our arrival home. Every day when we rise, we can tell ourselves, my journey today will bring me closer to home; it may be just around the bend. All we long for, we shall have; all we long to be, we will be. All that has hurt us so deeply – the dragons and nits, the Arrows and our false lovers, and Satan himself – they will all be swept away.

And then real life begins.”

-Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance

The Anointing at Bethany

by Malcolm Guite

Come close with Mary, Martha, Lazarus
So close the candles flare with their soft breath.
And kindle heart and soul to flame within us,
Lit by these mysteries of life and death.
For beauty now begins the final movement,
In quietness and intimate encounter,
The alabaster jar of precious ointment
Is broken open for the world’s true lover.
The whole room richly fills to feast the senses
With all the yearning such a fragrance brings,
The heart is mourning but the spirit dances,
Here at the very centre of all things,
Here at the meeting place of love and loss
We all foresee and see beyond the cross.