Mar 25, 2021 | Blog
“THE POET THINKS ABOUT THE DONKEY” Mary Oliver On the outskirts of Jerusalem the donkey waited. Not especially brave, or filled with understanding, he stood and waited. How horses, turned out into the meadow, leap with delight! How doves, released from...
Mar 11, 2021 | Blog
KINDNESS Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the...
Mar 11, 2021 | Blog
SABBATHS 1985, V Wendell Berry How long does it take to make the woods? As long as it takes to make the world. The woods is present as the world is, the presence of all its past and of all its time to come. It is always finished, it is always being made, the act of...
Feb 10, 2021 | Blog
AN EXCERPT FROM “PARADISE,” Toni Morrison An excerpt from Toni Morrison’s Paradise, formatted as a poem for your reading pleasure… Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind....
Feb 4, 2021 | Blog
FROM “THE COLOR PURPLE,” Alice Walker Listen, God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration. You saying God vain? I ast. Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a...
Jan 28, 2021 | Blog
THE RED WING CHURCH TED KOOSER There’s a tractor in the doorway of a church in Red Wing, Nebraska, in a coat of mud and straw that drags the floor. A broken plow sprawls beggarlike behind it on some planks that make a sort of roadway up the steps. The steeple’s gone....
