Just as each new seed requires a period of gestation -- a time of deep silence and solitude -- so, too, we need such seasons. "Someone wrote me recently and asked if it wasn't frustrating to have exterior solitude interrupted. Well, you learn to live out of your interior solitude. And perhaps this is one of the keys to living in the madness, the telescoping demands and resulting exhaustion of our society: to explore our own interior solitude and learn not only to be afraid of it but to live out if its self-discipline, its limitless resources and deep silence. Solitude is like a tea ceremony, the celebration of life in all its homely movements taken out of time -- the wonder of the commonplace, the mystery of ordinary life ... Solitude is being poured-out-through. We evolve toward simplicity. We dwell in the Word."
The spring is back. The earth is like a child
who’s learnt a heap of poems off by heart:
so many of them, and how hard she toiled!
But she wins prizes now; she has them pat.
At school, her teacher was a strict old man,
although we liked the whiteness of his beard.
Now, when we ask her please to give a name
to colours green or blue, she knows the word!
Earth, you’re in luck; today’s a holiday.
We children want to catch you; come and play.
Whoever laughs the most will win the game.
Her teacher’s lessons, wearisome and long,
are printed in each root, each stiff, straight stem.
And listen now: she’s turned them into song!
who’s learnt a heap of poems off by heart:
so many of them, and how hard she toiled!
But she wins prizes now; she has them pat.
At school, her teacher was a strict old man,
although we liked the whiteness of his beard.
Now, when we ask her please to give a name
to colours green or blue, she knows the word!
Earth, you’re in luck; today’s a holiday.
We children want to catch you; come and play.
Whoever laughs the most will win the game.
Her teacher’s lessons, wearisome and long,
are printed in each root, each stiff, straight stem.
And listen now: she’s turned them into song!