As many of you know, last March, 27th (the day before my 59th birthday), I had a heart attack. I was in Albany, NY where I was going to take a week of vacation, of sorts, and celebrate my birthday with friends. Within 24 hours of my arrival, I found myself in the St. Peter's Hospital emergency room followed by a 7 day, all expense paid, vacation in the CCU.
Most people have a number of "watershed" events over the course of the life and for me, this was not only a "watershed" event, it was the most significant moment in my life, thus far. I knew in an instant that my life would never be the same again.
The Lake of Beauty
By Edward Carpenter
Let your mind be quiet, realising the beauty of the world,
and the immense, the boundless treasures that it holds in store.
All that you have within you, all that your heart desires,
all that your Nature so specially fits you for - that or the
counterpart of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for you.
It will surely come to you.
Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time
will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of
hands will make no difference.
Therefore do not begin that game at all.
Do not recklessly spin the waters of your mind
in this direction and in that,
lest you become like a spring lost and
dissipated in the desert.
But draw them together into a little compass, and hold them
still, so still;
And let them become clear, so clear - so limpid, so mirror-like;
at last the mountains and the sky shall glass themselves in
peaceful beauty,
and the antelope shall descend to drink, and to gaze at her
reflected image, and the lion to quench his thirst,
and Love himself shall come and bend over, and catch his
own likeness in you.
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| i thank You God for most this amazing By e.e. cummings i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth day of life and love and wings:and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any-lifted from the no of all nothing-human merely being doubt unimaginably You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened) |
This photograph was taken by a parishioner at St. Paul's in Fairfield, CT in October of 2003 at the Blessing of the Animals.
