Saw Billy Collins recite his poetry for an audience at Oakland University after he was named Poet Laureate. I fell in love with his work then. Love him still!
Nine Horses: Poems by Billy Collins
Tag: poem
Paul’s Letter to the Colossians
Let your conversation be always full of grace, ‘seasoned with salt’,
so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
‘Salt’ is one of the most significant words in the whole Bible. We usually hear it in reference to God’s people – ‘salt of the earth’. Because of salt’s preservative nature, Christians, generation after
generation, preserve His name. Also, salt was hard to come by and expensive; Christ’s followers are rare and priceless to Him as He is to us. The words of God give us balance and purify our life as does
salt, as it balances the taste of food, bringing out all the subtle elements which make a flavor more delicate, synchronized, and desirable. Salt is also a necessary nutritional element to life itself; God is also—if only to enjoy in full capacity your life here on earth. Paul is saying here that when we speak, we should have a
little of this good salt on our lips or at least peace, love, and understanding, a balance, a purity. It will make difficult things
easier to say, and it will give mundane conversations life. Because I think to ‘live’ is to recognize that every day is a significant opportunity to cultivate a greater understanding of life, and share
the conundrum of its complexities with one another using the salt on our lips to do so. And in that, even discussing the weather will have as much significance as giving birth to life itself.
The Book of Numbers
*I have no authority to teach you lessons from the Bible, I only hope you will find something useful. You might disagree with my interpretation and that’s OK!
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“When you cross the Jordan in to Canaan, drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places.” –Numbers 33:51
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OK verses such as the above are what gives God a bad rap. It sounds violent and scary and seems to advertise war. But I will tell you that you must not look at the surface for the meaning in scripture, people that do often miss the truth and can interpret wrongly. Go deeper and this verse takes on a different shape entirely: Before your spirit can settle in peace with God and with yourself, drive out all things that are holding you back from a true and pure existence—all that you consider an ‘idol’ should be destroyed. For me, for a long time, my ‘idol’ getting traditionally published. I prayed and prayed for this to happen. But it wasn’t until I read this verse and saw my own folly in holding that goal on a pedestal of importance over many other things, and asking myself exactly WHY I wanted my books out there (was it for selfish reasons, or was my goal to help people?), that I was able to give up the idea and decide instead to be happy no matter what happened to all my books, poems, essays and dedicate my writing to the purpose of GOOD. Once I did this I found a publisher. Call that whatever you like, but I know where this gift came from. Have faith and hope that God will show you the way, but we must be patient and trust Him with all our hearts. That’s what I think anyway.
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St. Teresa de Avila by Herself
Finished this over the weekend. I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to entrench themselves in faith reading. At times it was frightening, especially when she talks about seeing visions of the devil. Those were times I wanted to put it down, because that does scare me, and I don’t even believe in such a thing but rather an evil presence in the ether around us. But she also saved me from ever being afraid if I did think otherwise. ‘It’ can’t harm us, she says, because ‘it’ can’t do anything without God’s permission and if we keep God near what can ‘it’ do? With this happy thought I carry on. .
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“Then I snap my fingers at all the devils; they shall be afraid of me. I do not understand these fears which make us cry, ‘The devil, the devil!’ When we might be saying, ‘God! God!’ and make all the devils tremble.” —St. Teresa de Avila
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For the Bride: Today is our Wedding Anniversary
For The Bride: A scrapbook for brides from 1920’s. My mother gave me this as a sort of joke on my anniversary one year along with a book called, The Silent Hostess, also another inside joke. .
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My husband and I were married 14 years ago today. I was 22 years old. It was 70 degrees in Michigan, and the leaves were still brilliantly colored on all the trees. We were indeed blessed. It was before everyone got really creative with wedding pics. Ours are very standard and professionally posed. Nothing fancy like people all jumping at the same time or pictures of shoes and rings, etc. Some details I remember: Our photographer had been hit by a car that day and had managed to limp his way to our wedding despite this. There were ladybugs flying all over the place, got themselves caught in my veil, on my gown, in the hair of bridesmaids and groomsmen. My uncle Jack flew in from California to surprise me on this day, and my dad asked if I was nervous before he walked me down the aisle. I denied being nervous but hummed Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture because I WAS nervous (and because I’m a weirdo). I couldn’t find Bryan for most of the event, and everyone kept asking if I was pregnant. 😂 .
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Here’s to all the brides out there!
Cheers 🥂 .
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#bridesmaids #bride #wedding #celebration #weddingparty #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booknerdigans #bookshelf #library #bookphotography #reading #bibliophile #mansion #booksofinstagram #booknerd #bookgeek #cheers #party #writersofinstagram #writingcommunity #readingcommunity
Inside the Detroit Public Library
Spent yesterday going through the archives in the Detroit Public Library’s Burton Historical Collection. What a beautiful library! It’s what I would like my personal library to look like, and what it’ll have to look like if I keep buying books! 😂 The interior is so vintage—late 1950’s, early 1960’s I’m guessing. 🥰
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Desert Islands by Walter de la Mare
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ If any of you would like to read an interesting book (which I’m sure you do), please try Walter de la Mare’s Desert Islands. I have a rule to buy any work of Walter de la Mare’s that I don’t already have; I like him a lot.
Desert Islands is sort of a collection of essays (that’s what I would call it because no two chapters seem to flow together) that not only examine themes of isolation in stories like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, but also Mare documents accounts of isolation in stages of Morphine-induced hallucinations from famous writers and letters written by scholars on the subject. It was a wonderful discovery. Every page was like a candle lit in some dark corner of a history forgotten. I can’t imagine there is another book quite like it out there.
This hard cover copy is a 1930 illustrated edition set against an old 1909 postcard and some shells and sand from California.
The book of Leviticus
*Disclaimer: Again, I have no authority to teach you, if you disagree with my thinking that’s OK!
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It’s Friday which means I’m sharing our next book of the Bible! I will say Leviticus and Numbers (I will talk about Numbers in two weeks) are two of the hardest books to get through because they, to me, are a bit boring. But the book of Leviticus, written by Moses, shares with us one of the most important and relevant verses. One which speaks profoundly to our present time and political atmosphere:
“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” –Leviticus 19:33-34
Not only can this be applied to our own U.S. border, but also to when you get introduced to your future in-laws, or a newcomer in the neighborhood, workplace, or religious organization. It is one of two important verses I have noted from this book. Most of the book is filled with strict instruction on how to keep the sabbath holy and ourselves holy. It feels very primitive to me. Some might find this interesting, but I was rather bored. Yet I see where it is an incredibly important addition to the Bible itself. Next week I’ll share thoughts on Galatians.
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The Return by Walter de la Mare
⭐️⭐️⭐️ I love Walter de la Mare! Although I gave this a three, it is only because his other work is so fabulous that this one failed to thrill by comparison. Much of his work carries the theme of isolation. In The Return, although not his best work, the protagonist gets possessed by a dead man after falling asleep on his grave. But De la Mare doesn’t seem to know what to do next with this, so the character is caught in a tangle of estrangement with friends, family, and even himself throughout the story. But perhaps that was the point all along—a point which begs one to ask: who are we anyway? .
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This copy is from @aaknopf a 1922 edition. .
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Adam Bede by George Elliot
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Today, if an agent were presented a query letter and the manuscript of Adam Bede, they would have rejected it over and over again and society would have lost a fabulous story. But I doubt that many people today would have the patience for this book. It took 100+ pages for me to get into it where I didn’t want to put it down. It was like a really innocent pastoral soup opera. Every sentence is delicious and every character is well developed to the point that you are sad when your journey with them is over. .
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Pictured is a 1909 edition set against a 1972 sketch of a cobbler. This print was originally hanging in the shoe department in the old Hudson’s in Downtown Detroit, which has since been demolished.
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BOOKS AND LOST STORIES 