book notes: ring of light

[prismaticbleed]

(all credit to madeleine l'engle. these bits struck us to the heart and we want to remember.)



A great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart
And breaks apart the dusky clouds of night.
The end of all is hinted in the start.

When we are born we beat the seeds of blight;
Around us life & death are torn apart,
Yet a great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart.

It lights the world to my delight.
Infinity is present in each part.
A loving smile contains all art.
The motes of starlight spark & dart.

A grain of sand holds power & might.
Infinity is present in each part,
And a great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart.




(henry vaughan)

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled.

There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear.
O for that Night, where I in him
Might live invisible and dim!



"there is something almost more intimate about crying that way with someone than there is about kissing… our weeping together had been more intimate than I was ready to be."

"if I'm confused, or upset, or angry, if I can go out and look at the stars I'll almost always get back a sense of proportion. it's not that they make me feel insignificant; it's the very opposite; they make me feel that everything matters, be it ever so small, and that there's meaning to life even when it seems most meaningless."

"you don't meditate about. you just meditate. it is, you might say, practice in dying, but it’s a practice to be begun as early in life as possible… it's much more finding than losing."

"when you're actually writing a poem, when you're in the middle of it, where are you?"

"I'm not sure. I'm more in the poem than I am in me. I'm using my mind, really using it, and yet I'm not directing the poem or telling it where to go. it's telling me."

"that's the way it is with science too…discoveries don't come when you're consciously looking for them. they come when for some reason you've let go conscious control. they come in a sudden flash, and you can receive that flash, or you can refuse to. but if you're willing to receive it, then for that instantaneous moment of time you're really you, but you’re not conscious in the same way you have to be later on when you look at what you saw in the flash, and then have to work out the equations to prove it."




the earth will never be the same again.
rock, water, tree, iron, share this grief
as distant stars participate in pain.
a candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
a dolphin death, o this particular loss
is heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried,
if this small one was tossed away as dross,
the very galaxies then would have lied.
how shall we sing our love's song now
in this strange land where all are born to die?
each tree and leaf and star show how
the universe is part of this one cry,
that every life is noted and is cherished,
and nothing loved is ever lost or perished.