A Day in Autumn

By R.S. Thomas

It will not always be like this,

The air windless, a few last

Leaves adding their decoration

To the trees’ shoulders, braiding the cuffs

Of the boughs with gold; a bird preening

In the lawn’s mirror. Having looked up

From the day’s chores, pause a minute,

Let the mind take its photograph

Of the bright scene, something to wear

Against the heart in the long cold.

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I am now in the habit of paying 50 cents each morning for a copy of the North County Times somewhere along the (ghetto) streets of Vista on my way to work. Today I flagged down a middle aged hispanic guy with kind eyes and a soft smile. In exchanging how-are-you-this-morning's, he responded with such sweet sincerity, "I'm blessed." And I was so caught off guard, because unlike the "I'm great" I responded with, his words are the kind that cannot be said casually. I imagine that they can only come from the deepest part of the heart, which (I could not think of a more poetic way to say this) made me feel like shit because I am so overwhelmingly blessed, and yet I can rarely bring myself to utter those words.

“No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and they wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.” - Annie Dillard

For my old car that rumbles and rattles with such comforting consistency, making every ride an adventure. Should I ever need them, there are snacks and pens and dimes hidden in every crevice. You can't pay for the kind of friendship we have. I wouldn't want to.

For a job that is exercise to my soul, leaving me mostly out of breath but ever so alive. No matter how unqualified or inadequate I feel, I can't seem to imagine doing anything else.

For the three people who've put up with me for 22 years. They deserve Nobel Peace prizes. I love them more than anything in the world.

For poetry; how I often selfishly feel that God created it just for me because it is so unspeakably beautiful.

For love that I can wear like a baggy sweatshirt and be lost inside the warmth of. How romantic to create such unimaginably expansive heavens so that He could tell me His love reaches beyond even these.

These are my happy thanksgivings. Cheers:)

I wish in the city of your heart
you would let me be the street
where you walk when you are most
yourself. I imagine the houses:
It has been raining, but the rain
is done and the children kept home
have begun opening their doors.

-Robley Wilson

Amazing lives. Definitely not all, but a special few. There is one name not on this list.

1901 Henry Dunant, founding the International Committee of the Red Cross
1911 Marie Curie, physics and chemistry
1921 Albert Einstein, discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect
1923 William Butler Yeats, inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation
1931 Jane Addams, Sociologist; International President, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
1948 T.S. Eliot, outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry
1954 Ernest Hemingway, lifetime literary achievement
1964 Martin Luther King, Jr., campaigner for civil rights
1975 Niels Bohr, fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics
1979 Mother Teresa, Leader of Missionaries of Charity
1982 Gabriel Garcia Marquez, novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts
1986 Elie Wiesel, Chairman of "The President's Commission on the Holocaust"
1990 Octavio Paz, Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat
1993 Nelson Mandela, worked for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa
1998 Amartya Sen, contributions to welfare economics for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, gender inequality, and political liberalism

Ugh. And I only pointedly accuse because I voted for him. Time to earn it, my friend.