Living Space Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary time | Sacred Space

Living Space Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary time | Sacred Space

"Farmer's Tribute: So God Made a Farmer"

            And on the 8th day, God looked down on His planned paradise and said, " I need a caretaker."

So God made a farmer.

            God said, " I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.

So God made a farmer.

            " I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild.  Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon - and mean it."

So God made a farmer.

            God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt.  And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.'  I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps.  During planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon. In spite the pain from the 'tractor back', he will put in another seventy-two hours.

So God made a farmer.

            God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbour's place.

So God made a farmer.

            God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark.  It has to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners.  Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church."

            "Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.' "

So God made a farmer.

~Paul Harvey

U.S.A.

~Beannaichte'

 17 September, 2015

@beannaichte.twitter.com.   

"Memories Chain"

My days

 are now in the golden leaf

Other Seasons left behind

On bended knee, it is I that weep

For yesterdays joy,

 I can never find.

From a family

 once linked together

Long ago, I dropped away

A circle never linked by love

But bound by past regret,

 and fear of another day.

Yes, it is I that is on bended knee

And the tears of my own regret

For the words of love, never spoken

With Memories Chain,

I am bound

 till death.


~ Alicia O'Hara
26 August, 2015 c.
  

@beannaichte.twitter.com

 

Living Space Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time | Sacred Space

Living Space Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time | Sacred Space

" Notes of Grace"

       I had always felt that love would never find me-or that if it did, it wouldn't stay. But now, the beautiful sound of the violin reminds me of the import of this trip and of my friends and their devotion- in spite of my attempts to distance them, in recent months. I realize I've measured out my love too carefully, protected my heart with a wall of stones. Now, pried loose by the music, those stones are falling away. The walk toward the platform becomes a pilgrimage, each step burdened with old fear and leavened new hope.

       Finally, I reach the music's source: a middle-aged man sitting on a folding camp stool, with an open violin case at his feet. Despite his large belly, he sits erect. His thinning gray hair is pulled into a scraggly ponytail, and his dark flannel trousers are frayed. The sweat stains darkening his shirt belie the effortlessness with which he seems to play. The music builds until it clears away the last stones of my resistance.  I realize now that, in whatever brief time I am given, I am here to love.

       Tears stream down my cheeks as I search the musician's pale, round face, hoping to meet his gaze, wanting to thank him in some way. But when I find his eyes, they are half-closed and empty. They are the wandering white oceans of the blind.

       Many months later, I still find comfort in the fact that in this uncertain world, truth and beauty are at work.  I know, because they spoke that day in Paris to a woman hard of hearing, through the hands of a man without sight.

                                                       ~Unknown

                        

~Beannaichte'

16 August, 2015

@beannaichte.twitter.com 

     

"My People Died"

              My people died of starvation and I came here alive, lamenting them in my loneliness...

              I am told,  "The tragedy of your country is only a part of the tragedy of the world; the Tears and the Blood shed in your country are only Drops in the River of Blood and Tears pouring night and day in the valleys and the plains of the world."

              This may be true, but the tragedy of my people is a Silent one conceived in the heads of men, whom we should call snakes and serpents.  The tragedy of my people is without music and without parades.

              If my people had revolted against the tyrants and died in defiance, I would have said that death for Liberty was more Honourable than the life of servitude.

              Whoever reaches Eternity with sword in his hand lives as long as there is Justice.

              If my Countrymen had entered the World War and were destroyed in battle to the last man,  I would have said it was a wild hurricane destroying the green and the dead branches; I would have said death under the force of a hurricane is better than life in the arms of olde age.

              If an earthquake had swallowed my people and loved ones, I would have said it the law of Nature directed by a power beyond the comprehension of man.  It is foolish to attempt to solve its Mysteries.

              But my people did not die in rebellion, did not die in battle and they were not buried by an earthquake.

              My people died on the Cross.  My people died with their Arms Stretched toward both East and West and their Eyes Seeking in the Darkness of the Skies.

             They died in Silence because the ears of Humanity had become Deaf to their Cry.

             They died but they were not criminals.

             They died because they were Peaceful.

             They died in the Land that produced Milk and Honey.

             They died because the hellish serpent seized all their flocks and all the harvest of their fields.

 Mirrors of the Soul;

~Kahlil Gibran

~Beannaichte'

 24 July, 2015

@beannaichte.twitter.com

               

"Lichen and Moss"

              Plants, rocks, waters, the land itself with its Sacred sites, Circles and directions participate in  reciprocity.  If you take something from the land-a herb, a rock, a moment's rest in a quiet spot-you must leave something. In the great round of being, all bring Wisdom and Support one another's Life.  Maniilaq, the great nineteenth-century Inupiaq prophet, taught that everything is relationship, like stars in a constellation, constellations within constellations.
              Mountain ranges endure the passing of many generations.  Braided rivers run blue with the blood of glaciers.  The land is audacious with many coloured varieties of arctic flowers, berries, mushrooms and herbs.  The soil is only inches deep, resting upon permanently frozen underground.  Fragile layers of lichen, moss, and alpine flowers make their way through difficulties of the harsh world.
              So it is with me...

~Barbara Flaherty

U.S.A./Ireland

The great sea has set me in motion,

Set me adrift

And I move as a weed in the river.

The arch of the sky

And the mightiness of storms

Encompasses me,

And I am left

Trembling with Joy. 

~Inuit Poem

~Beannaichte'

15 July, 2015

@beannaichte.twitter.com