Tag Archives: poetry

Wonder & Whimsy: delight and knowledge

A weekly curation of quotations I come across in my reading life (or on random condiment jars) — from the inspirational to the miscellaneous. Perhaps one inspires you or catches your fancy too…

delight and attention…

“The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”
Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

wonder and knowledge…

“Wise men all ways of knowledge past,

To th’shepherds wonder come at last:

To know, can only wonder breed,

And not to know, is wonder’s seed.

— from “Hymn” by Sidney Godolphin

You can’t stop this…

“So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these mean and let them alone; for if this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” — Gamaliel, a Jewish Pharisee (Acts 5:38-39)

respecting the mind of a child…

“Ms. Glaser reminds us that we should always assume that more is going on in a child’s mind than she is able to express.” — Karen Glass, The Art of Narration

Wonder & Whimsy: Prayer, Poetry & Habit

A weekly curation of quotations I come across in my reading life (or on random condiment jars) — from the inspirational to the miscellaneous. Perhaps one inspires you or catches your fancy too…

How to approach prayer today…

“In our petitions we will receive more by sighs than by speech, more by tears than by words.”

(The “Response” to the second reading in the OOR in the Liturgy of the Hours for today)

From St. Robert Southwell’s poem “Content and Rich”…

“I dwell in Grace’s court,

Enriched with Virtue’s rights;

Faith guides my wit, Love leads my will,

Hope all my mind delights.”

Are we living as God intended us?

“The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.” (St. Irenaeus)

The power and role of habit…

“Education is the formation of habits.”

“Habit is 10 natures.”

— Charlotte Mason (Home Education, Vol. 1, pt. 3)

My Reading Challenge Pick for…”A work of poetry by a Catholic author”

Are you participating in the 2018 Catholic Reading Challenge? If not, it’s never too late to start — join us! I share my picks for each category about once a month. So far, the categories have been diversifying my reading life, particularly this next pick…

Category: “A work of poetry by a Catholic author”

My Pick: The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

I stumbled across a very helpful post at The Catholic Gentleman while determining what poet I should read for this category. It was a hard choice, but I ended up going with Gerard Manley Hopkins. No regrets here. (And now I have a solid list of remaining poets to work my way through next. First runner-up: Edith Sitwell.) Disclaimer: I’m not sure if the edition I linked to on Amazon is the exact one that I read, since my copy was a wonderful old and falling apart hardback from the library. However, I’m sure that most collections would have all of the same poems.

What I loved…

Hopkins’ faith and Catholic identity come through strongly in his poetry. There is a good bit that is symbolic, and then there are a good many poems that are commemorative. (Admittedly, I lacked the context for fully understanding some of them.) For example, he wrote a beautiful poem in commemoration of a group of nuns who drowned in a shipwreck. When reading selections such as these, I thought of him as a eulogist. There was also some moving symbolism used with the Blessed Mother, a fairly common subject in his poetry as well. Continue reading