I feel the real medium for me is silence, so I could be writing in any language. To inflect the inner silence, to give it body, that’s all we’re doing. You use the voice to make the silence present. The real subject in poetry isn’t the voice. The real subject is silence. Li Young Lee,Continue reading “day 9: for silence”
Tag Archives: wonder
heart of stone
Once again it is my honour to contribute a reflection to the ‘monk in the world’ blog of the Abbey of the Arts. This piece was first published on May 15, 2024 (although it was written in May 2023). all words and images by Kate Kennington Steer I arrived at February 2023 in a post-viralContinue reading “heart of stone”
Epiphany 2023: knowing in whole…
Living in the earth-deposits of our history Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old cure for fever or melancholy a tonic for living on this earth in the winters of this climate. Today I was reading about Marie Curie: she must have known she sufferedContinue reading “Epiphany 2023: knowing in whole…”
watchnight 2022
We met among alphabets. I saw myself Greek: walking the walls, inviolate as logic, mistress of philosophy’s glassy tongue. Translation came slow. I learned to trust Hebrew’s rich misreadings, risk reading between the lines: language of faith, our leap in the dark. ‘Among Alphabets’ Helen Tookey And when night comes, and you look back overContinue reading “watchnight 2022”
whole: day 27
He loved cherry sunsets growing heavy on the branches of the evening; He loved bud coloured dawns opening from the east’s earth. He loved the sea, green in its happiness, seeking the shore; He loved to see it languishing back stonily from its crest to its groove. He loved the character of birds, the flockContinue reading “whole: day 27”
whole: Blue Christmas 2022
Pity me not because the light of dayAt close of day no longer walks the sky;Pity me not for beauties passed awayFrom field and thicket as the the year goes by;Pity me not the waning of the moon,Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,And youContinue reading “whole: Blue Christmas 2022”
whole: day 23
Of all that God has shown me I can speak just the smallest word, Not more than a honey bee Takes on his foot From an overspilling jar. Mechtild of Magdeburg I wonder if I have to be dead before I can see the whole of God? It isn’t unusual to hear people say ofContinue reading “whole: day 23”
whole: Sunday 4
Let us sit in this moment of God’s creating. Rest in its uniqueness; savor its potential. It is pregnant with new possibilities waiting to be born, God’s secrets not yet heard, God’s dreams not yet seen, God’s visions not yet realised. Let us sit and look and listen. Breathe in the fragrance of its unfolding.Continue reading “whole: Sunday 4”
whole: Sunday 3
I understand now that I’m not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, “For the same reason I laugh so often – because I’m paying attention.” Glennon Doyle Melton FOR NOW WE SHALL SEE THROUGH AContinue reading “whole: Sunday 3”
whole: day 9
IT IS ONLY BY PUTTING IT INTO WORDS THAT I MAKE IT WHOLE. Virginia Woolf If seeingdarkly is my shorthand for ‘for now we shall see through a glass, darkly’, then my shorthand for ‘now I know in part’ (I Corinthians 13.12 KJV) is knowingdarkly. There are so many days when I do not knowContinue reading “whole: day 9”
image into ikon 