Alyosha emerged from the dream transformed. Something burned in his heart, something suddenly filled him almost painfully, tears of rapture nearly burst from his soul. ...Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars. ...Alyosha felt clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as the heavenly vault descend into his soul. ...Never in his life would he forget that moment.
~ from THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoevsky
It could take a tribe
to find the way back
to what you love.
A day's wandering
could become a season,
then another. At times
it may all signal chaos.
But take heart.
Sometimes
there is intelligence
even in the crumbling
of things.
The creek is wearing its usual disguise,
braiding and unbraiding itself
through narrows and pools as it pleases,
proving its force by taking the path
of least resistance, taking apart the stone
one grain at a time.
If you were water, what part of your will
would you be willing to dissolve?
Which of your ways would you have to learn
not to want to have?
And how, if you always ran downstream,
would your desire know how to live?
~ Steve Godwin from "If You Were Water" in FINDING HEART
A fragment of fence long trampled
by those who needed most to pass.
Pilgrim, immigrant, refugee,
all journeys severe, all made in longing.
Most cross over what's already breached,
but the step is long and touches down
In a world that takes heart
in the breaking of what divides.
~ Steve Godwin from "What Divides" in FINDING HEART
