See that gazebo at the end of the bike path?
There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.
It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.
-- John O’Donohue
Presents
I give you emptiness
I give you plenitude,
unwrap them carefully –
One’s as fragile as the other –
and when you thank me
I’ll pretend to notice the doubt in your voice
when you say they’re just what you wanted.
Put them on the table by your bed.
When you wake in the morning
they’ll have gone through the door of sleep
into your head. Wherever you go
they’ll go with you and
wherever you are you’ll wonder,
smiling about the fullness
you can’t add to and the emptiness
that you can fill.
Norman MacCaig.
"If you could imagine the most incredible story ever, it would be less incredible than the story of being here. And the ironic thing is that story is not a story, it is true. It takes us so long to see where we are. It takes us even longer to see who we are. This is why the greatest gift you could ever dream is a gift that you can only receive from one person. And that person is you yourself. Therefore, the most subversive invitation you could ever accept is the invitation to awaken to who you are and where you have landed. Plato said in The Symposium that one of the greatest privileges of a human life is to become midwife to the birth of the soul in another. When your soul awakens, you begin to truly inherit your life. You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces, repetitive talk and weary roles and slip deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are called to become. The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown. Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside our vision and our control. We avoid it or quell it by filtering it through our protective barriers of domestication and control. The normal way never leads home.
Once you start to awaken, no one can ever claim you again for the old patterns. Now you realise how precious your time here is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the rosters of expectation which promise you safety and the confirmation of your outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of your gift. You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells. You want your God to be wild and to call you to where your destiny awaits." --John O'Donohue
The Foundry joined Wheatland Mission last evening for a Passover Seder meal. Since we are studying the Tabernacle at the Foundry during 2010, it was great to get into more Jewish lessons. 
Who would have thought they would ever stretch out like this...
"Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into the here..."
✙Julia, Summer of 1953✙
Seems like a long time ago since he was 2 years old--what a sweet little boy he was! I love him so much!
