The Habit of Redemption
I have felt the world shrivel to days
Beckoning me
Into a hell of indifference
Until I found
The habit of redemption
Living in my mind.
It breathed in the morning
As I wrote a letter
To a woman in mourning
For her dead brother
He was sixty-six
And rare.
His days touched by imagination.
He died in October
Tending his garden.
It reached the deepest part of me
When the middle-aged man
Raking leaves turned quickly
And said ‘how are you?’
Autumn died at his feet
But the day was new.
I would say nothing about all this,
Never bother to mention
The moment’s metamorphosis
Were it not that hell gapes
At every step.
What I am given is not a means of escape
But of confrontation,
The truest education
That I know.
Moment that is all moments
Be with me when I grasp
A little of the meaning of transience,
A hint of the infernal night.
Come in the shape of the blade of grass
Stuck to the side of my boot
Or a kind word from stranger or friend
Or a yellow shedding from an old tree
That will not bend.
BRENDAN KENNELLY
Success
In Memory of Christina Schmidt
Success is speaking words of praise,
In cheering other people’s ways.
In doing just the best you can,
With every task and every plan.
It’s silence when your speech would hurt,
Politeness when your neighbour’s curt.
It’s deafness when the scandal flows,
And sympathy with others’ woes.
It’s loyalty when duty calls,
It’s courage when disaster falls.
It’s patience when the hours are long,
It’s found in laughter and in song.
It’s in the silent time of prayer,
In happiness and in despair.
In all of life and nothing less,
We find the thing we call success.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
The Spirit Level
Let nothing disturb you
Let nothing frighten you
All things are passing
God never changes
Patience obtains all things
She who possesses God lacks nothing
God alone suffices.
ST TERESA OF AVILA