litpitt

[litpitt]

In the beginning was the end and in the end, silence and the silence is God. She was and is God, all of life born through her.

She flashes rays of darkness and the whiteness does not overcome her because in her is life and her life is flesh like midnight.

-Isaac Villegas, from “Dark Advent”

[litpitt]

Sorrow is Not My Name

There are, on this planet alone, something like two million naturally occurring sweet things, some with names so generous as to kick the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon, stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks at the market. Think of that. The long night, the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah. But look; my niece is running through a field calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel and at the end of my block is a basketball court. I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.

-Ross Gay, from “Sorrow is Not My Name”

Poets are essential for reminding us of delight.

[litpitt]

Famous

The river is famous to the fish. The loud voice is famous to silence,   which knew it would inherit the earth   before anybody said so.   The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   watching him from the birdhouse.   The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   The idea you carry close to your bosom   is famous to your bosom.   The boot is famous to the earth,   more famous than the dress shoe,   which is famous only to floors. The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   I want to be famous to shuffling men   who smile while crossing streets,   sticky children in grocery lines,   famous as the one who smiled back. I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   but because it never forgot what it could do.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

[litpitt]

Blessing the Dust A Blessing for Ash Wednesday

All those days you felt like dust, like dirt, as if all you had to do was turn your face toward the wind and be scattered to the four corners

or swept away by the smallest breath as insubstantial—

Did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?

This is the day we freely say we are scorched.

This is the hour we are marked by what has made it through the burning.

This is the moment we ask for the blessing that lives within the ancient ashes, that makes its home inside the soil of this sacred earth.

So let us be marked not for sorrow. And let us be marked not for shame. Let us be marked not for false humility or for thinking we are less than we are

but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made, and the stars that blaze in our bones, and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear.

–Jan Richardson

[litpitt]

“One windy April day, our daughter was born; or rather, I birthed her. Of course, Chris helped me. But my doula friend pointed out to me that we often say, “my child was born.” Birth deserves more than passive language because it is not a passive act. It deserves all the animal sounds that emerge from a woman when she has to open and push a baby into the world.”

--Molly Caro May, “What Happened When We Gave Our Daughter My Last Name”

[litpitt]

“Once upon a time there was a six-foot-tall woman with blue hair and a sense of smallness. In her house was a teacup saying ‘girl, you got this!’ and on her wall was a kitten hanging from a clothesline. The kitten’s word balloon said something like, ‘Hang in there!’ or ‘Don’t let go!’ Always something with an exclamation mark. Isn’t that the moral of the story, always? There is always a small woman, hiding her grandness, trying to fill up on uplifting wordplay. But today, this small woman sits down and writes a poem in which she details her smallness and why she came to be that way. Another small woman reads it, and from the tip of her hair a fire starts, but just as quickly dies. Isn’t that why we are here? To write another poem for a small woman to read, and then another. Until the amount of sparks are too much for the quick extinguishing, and she is a woman on fire, exploding into the world.”

--Heather Bell’s poet bio on Rattle

[litpitt]

[litpitt]

It’s easy for someone to joke about scars if they’ve never been cut.

William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet (via wordsnquotes)

[litpitt]

Sometimes even the false is tender. I am astounded by the various kisses we’re capable of.

-Stephen Dunn, from “Each From Different Heights”

[litpitt]

Let the eye enlarge with all it beholds. I want to celebrate color, how one red leaf

flickers like a match held to a dry branch, and the whole world goes up in orange and gold.

-Linda Pastan, from “Autumn”

[litpitt]

I am in the mood to dissolve in the sky.

Virginia Woolf (via quotemadness)

[litpitt]

Hope was a vinegar-colored halo that formed around our heads. It came and went, like fighting and fireflies. -Diane Seuss, from "It seems, back then, there was a mythic teapot"

[litpitt]

I wish I could remold you to vertical and golden

-Glass Animals

[litpitt]

You don’t need to be all healed in order to do great work in the world. You just have to be willing to get bigger than your fear of failing.

-Chani Nicholas

[litpitt]

The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

-Marge Piercy, from “To be of use”

[litpitt]

God speaks to each of us as she makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. -Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows)

[litpitt]

No matter your political views, this is a historic moment for America. And it’s just one more example of how far women have come on the long journey toward equality.

I want all of our daughters and sons to see that this, too, is their inheritance. I want them to know that it’s never been just about the Benjamins; it’s about the Tubmans too. And I want them to help do their part to ensure that America is a place where every single child can make of her life what she will.

That’s what twenty-first century feminism is about: the idea that when everybody is equal, we are all more free.

--Barack Obama in Glamour Magazine