They also serve who only stand and wait.
this is the last line in a poem from John Milton. After going blind, Milton wrote the poem “On His Blindness”.
On His Blindness
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
John Milton
Source: Wikipedia
The Science of Loneliness: How Isolation Can Kill You | New Republic
The psychological definition of loneliness hasn’t changed much since Fromm-Reichmann laid it out. “Real loneliness,” as she called it, is not what the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard characterized as the “shut-upness” and solitariness of the civilized. Nor is “real loneliness” the happy solitude of the productive artist or the passing irritation of being cooped up with the flu while all your friends go off on some adventure. It’s not being dissatisfied with your companion of the moment—your friend or lover or even spouse— unless you chronically find yourself in that situation, in which case you may in fact be a lonely person. Fromm-Reichmann even distinguished “real loneliness” from mourning, since the well-adjusted eventually get over that, and from depression, which may be a symptom of loneliness but is rarely the cause. Loneliness, she said—and this will surprise no one—is the want of intimacy.
Source: newrepublic.com
Source: positivityispromising
To whom do you vocalize the most intense, irrational-meaning inchoate, inarticulate anger? Would you do so with someone who could fire you or cast you out of a cherished position or relationship? Not likely. You don’t trust them-you don’t believe they would endure the depths of your disappointment, confusion. And so the lament is never sung together, nor the anger ever addressed for fear that consequences would occur that are more devastating than the potential joy of reconciliation.
The person who hears your lament and far more bears your lament against them, paradoxically, is someone you deeply, wildly trust. It is the paradox that opens the heart to unfathomable rest. To sing a lament against God in worship reveals far, far greater trust than to sing a jingle about how happy we are and how much we trust him.
Dan Allender
“The life of a poet must be reflected in his poetry. That is the law of the art and a law of life.”
— Pablo Neruda, The Art of Poetry No. 14 (interview by Rita Guibert; translated by Ronald Christ), The Paris Review
recycled soul: The Man Who Looks Lost as He Stands in the Sympathy Card Section at Hallmark
looks so sad with his bent umbrella
that you want to place a hand on his shoulder,
say, “It’ll be Okay.” But you don’t.
Because you also look like a crumbling statue
narrowed by rain, because you too have been abandoned
by language and what’s there to speak of or write
among so many words….
“So lasting they are, the rivers!” Only think. Sources somewhere in the mountains pulsate and springs seep from a rock, join in a stream, in the current of a river, and the river flows through centuries, millennia. Tribes, nations pass, and the river is still there, and yet it is not, for water does not stay the same, only the place and the name persist, as a metaphor for a permanent form and changing matter. The same rivers flowed in Europe when none of today’s countries existed and no languages known to us were spoken. It is in the names of rivers that traces of lost tribes survive. They lived, though, so long ago that nothing is certain and scholars make guesses which to other scholars seem unfounded. It is not even known how many of these names come from before the Indo-European invasion, which is estimated to have taken place two thousand to three thousand years B. C. Our civilization poisoned river waters, and their contamination acquires a powerful emotional meaning. As the course of a river is a symbol of time, we are inclined to think of a poisoned time. And yet the sources continue to gush and we believe time will be purified one day. I am a worshipper of flowing and would like to entrust my sins to the waters, let them be carried to the sea.
—Czeslaw Milosz, “Rivers” (translated from the Polish by the author and Robert Hass)
Photography Credit Todd Gross
A Poet Reflects: chasingtailfeathers: “All words, then, belonging to the inner world of...
“All words, then, belonging to the inner world of the mind, are of the imagination, are originally poetic words. The better, however, any such word is fitted for the needs of humanity, the sooner it loses its poetic aspect by commonness of use. It ceases to be heard as…
Source: settledthingsstrange
We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.
Jean-Paul Sartre (via asyoulikeitnow)
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