Kurt Brindley's Blog, page 146
May 27, 2014
Amphibious Meditation
expecting nothing
sitting, waiting — unattached
patience his reward
Filed under: Poetry Tagged: frog, haiku, nature, photography, Poem, poetry, spirituality
Before the Blossom
Lake Erie, Spring 2014
Filed under: Photography Tagged: Ashtabula, Lake Erie, nature, ohio, photography, Saybrook Park, spring, trees, water
May 25, 2014
Sermon Series: “Entering the Dark Cloud of God”
do not fear the dark
for faith requires no light
grace shines through the night
Originally posted on TIME:
Read sermons from additionalspeakers provided to TIME by the Festival.
Grace to you and peace in the name of the one God who comes in more than one way. I am glad to be with you on day two of the Festival of Homiletics, which I think of as the preaching conference for people who will pay good money to avoid a) having to preach and b) being assigned to small groups. Am I right?
Since we are all here to pick up some tips from each other, I thought I’d lead with one of mine: whenever you come up on something about God, the gospel, or the life of faith that everyone knows is true, step back from the reverential crowd whose gaze is fixed on it and look in the opposite direction—because nine times out of ten there is something just as true back there, though largely…
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Filed under: Poetry, Spirituality Tagged: darkness, faith, grace, haiku, poems, poetry, spirituality, time, writing
May 23, 2014
The Mind Is Like The Sky
Clouded
Polluted
Strewn with Soot and Sand
Contrails Scattered in their Run
Ne’er the Eye can See the Sun
Tho’ when the Damning Winds Blow Clear
and Fade Away to Silence
Serenity
Clarity
Tears of Sun to Whet the Eye
Vision Eternal Lights the Sky
Filed under: Poetry Tagged: contrails, damning winds, eye, poetry, sky, spirituality, Tao Te Ching, vision eternal
May 19, 2014
An Ode To A Happy Little Spider
(Or, A Song For A Sad, Unfortunate Fly)
The happy little spider
Climbs the brightly colored wall
To spin a bouncy little web
While the playful blue birds call
Spinning spinning spinning
While humming a happy, cheerful tune
He builds for his tomorrow
In the corner of the room
As the sleepy evening sun
Settles softly into bed
The happy little spider
Spins his final thread
Still humming his cheerful tune
And oh so happy with his feat
He inspects his silky work
To ensure it’s all complete
With the chirping of the crickets
And with the crescent moon in ebb
The happy little spider
Snuggles in his web
As his sleepy eyelids close
Right before his dreams begin
He says his evening prayers
With a happy, thankful grin
For he knows that comes the morrow
When he rises from his bed
His prayers will all be answered
And his belly will be fed
Filed under: Poetry Tagged: blue birds, colored wall, crickets, happy poems, little spider, moon, poems, poetry, prayers, spider webs, spiders, sunsets, unfortunate fly, writing
May 16, 2014
Do Not Put Out To Sea
Do not put out to sea
if the fathoms fear your heart
or the waves crashing
the bow would be the horrifying start
of your decent unto the depths
of the mind’s cavernous holds
the unsolicitous brigs of silent solitude
Do not put out to sea
where the horizon never ends
and where the gull drifting
the wind with listless certitude tends
to veer the vessel off its course
and unto the desperate grip of the impatient settling shoal
if you ne’er true to the navigable stars of the sacred sky
Do not put out to sea
if to you a wake is nothing but the past
an impression of the moment faintly there
and then forgotten, ne’er does it last
unless cast in poignancy and pain
and set upon the mantle of despair
for it is the way, the calming captain of the morrow’s mind
Filed under: Poetry Tagged: calm, captain, despair, mind, pain, poems, poetry, poignancy, sea, silent solitude, wake, writing
British Library Puts More Than a Thousand of Its ‘Greatest Literary Treasures’ Online
Something to be excited about…
Originally posted on TIME:
The British Library launched a new website Friday where people from around the world can now admire some of its “greatest literary treasures.”
The site is expected to become the biggest digital English literature collection, the Library says. Manuscripts of “Jane Eyre,” the preface to Dickens’s “Oliver Twist,” and an early draft of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” as well as William Blake’s notebook, including drafts of his iconic poems “London” and ‘The Tyger,” are among the collection’s highlights.
focuses on the Romantic and Victorian periods, and also includes the manuscripts of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Austen, Dickens and Wilde as well as the largest collection of childhood writings of the Brontë sisters.
The British Library had commissioned a survey of over 500 secondary school teachers asking how they think English literature is perceived by young people. Three quarters of teachers say that their…
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Filed under: Books Tagged: books, Britain, libraries, literature, writing
May 15, 2014
A Story For the Misaligned, Sailor Or Otherwise
Click to find out more about it
This book is dedicated to anyone–regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender and all its breathless facets, sexual orientation, non-sexual orientation, sexual non-orientation, spirituality or lack thereof, religion or lack thereof, nationality or lack thereof, political affiliation or lack thereof, occupation or lack thereof, education or lack thereof, good looks or lack thereof, height, weight, shoe size, or any other ways we have identified and implemented as means to compare and contrast and separate and segregate and relegate and rank ourselves as humans–who has ever once regretted his or her or their identity.
This book, then, is for us, all of us.
Filed under: Writing Tagged: books, ethnicity, fiction, homosexuals, LGBT, perceptions, race, sex, sexual orientation, stereotypes, writing
May 14, 2014
Where You Are We Cannot Go
Franz Kafka
With you
there we are
at the places we cannot go
with you
we go
you take us there with you
to the places we cannot go
You guide us
drive us
deep into the heart
into the dark
into the places we cannot go
Through the heat
through the snow
the snow
the bitter snow
the insufferable snow
with you through the snow
we lose ourselves
in the places we cannot go
crumbling castles in the sky
looming shadows
rampart mysteries
the eyes
spying eyes
lying eyes
the eyes coaxing us down
the endless trails
the trails without end
that lead us
to the places we cannot go
the hunger
the bitter hunger
we hunger
we are there
with you
and we hunger
insatiable
we live for the hunger
we hunger to be there with you
enduring trials indiscriminate
to be with you
to suffer
with you
the trial
the trials
the accusations of truths
for which we have no defense
Filed under: Art, Poetry Tagged: art, authors, drawing, fiction, Franz Kafka, literature, photo design, photo editing, poems, poetry, The Castle, The Hunger Artist, The Trial
