Readings

Yesterday, my mother-in-law gave me a book titled Of Earth and Sky compiled by Thomas Becknell. It is a compilation of short stories and poems about spiritual lessons from nature which are the lessons of ancient virtues. Thomas Aquinas created a list of seven virtues as a basic guide for living a good life. The virtues are Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, Justice, Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Over the next few months I would like to share a piece from each chapter with you. Things come into our lives just as we need them and I feel this book came to me at a time when things seem a little out of control. I have encountered several small challenges in the last few months. I haven't shared them all here on my blog but it has been an accumulation of many small obstacles.

This poem came from the First Chapter of Prudence.

If we Surrendered to Earth's Intelligence

How surely gravity's law,

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of even the smallest thing

and pulls it towards the heart of the world.

Each thing-

each stone, blossom, child-

is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance,

push out beyond what we each belong to

for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered

to earth's intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again

to learn from the things,

because they are in God's heart;

they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.

-Rainer Maria Rilke (1899)