While reading today's email edition of Mindful News, I followed a link to Joanna Goddard's blog, A Cup of Jo. She wrote an article called, What's the Most Beautiful Thing You've Ever Read?
I was immediately intrigued. I have a fascination with words. Obviously, one of my passions is writing. I'm a voracious reader and keep a running list of beautiful passages I find in books. I do the same with quotes. I enjoy poetry readings. The library and bookstores are two of my favorite places.
As of right now, Joanna's blog has 1157 comments in response to her question! I've only had time to go through a handful of the comments and I've found some real goodies. Of course, those have been copied and pasted into a Word document so I can refer back to them when I so desire.
I thought it'd be fun to ask you ~ my readers ~ what is the most beautiful thing you've ever read? Please share with all of us. It can be lines from a book, a particular quote, a poem, song lyrics, a Bible verse...whatever words have moved you.
{My current reads}
I'll start out by sharing a few of my favorite, beautiful words with you. I had a hard time picking out what to share. There's so much!
QUOTES
Why do people keep asking to see God's identity papers when darkness opening into morning is more than enough?
(Mary Oliver)
We would be together and have out books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.
We would be together and have out books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.
(Ernest Hemmingway)
PASSAGE FROM A BOOK
PASSAGE FROM A BOOK
The blueberries were ready now, soft, inky, desperate to stain. And there was the snow, outside my window, smothering the earth. I imagined that all things in life had their singular drives - to stain, to smother, to support, to survive, to nurture. The sink said, Splash me, and the oven said, Stuff me, and the refrigerator, the caretaker, hummed, I am here, I am here. I stood in the middle of my kitchen like the clever oiler of their machinery, but a piece of me wished to be elsewhere. A piece of me wanted to walk into the snow, to disappear slowly from view, to draw around myself in a watertight line.
(Nora Seton, The Kitchen Congregation)
A POEM
LOVE AFTER LOVE
Derek Walcott
The time will come
A POEM
LOVE AFTER LOVE
Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
OK, your turn!
I love this idea, the sharing of words. To lift us up and for me, this time of year definitely calls for more lifting up.
ReplyDeleteI recently found this quote from Sue Monk Kidd:
"Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here."
I feel like I am going to add that to my blog bio somewhere.
For me most recently it would be the book I read and reviewed, The Dearly Beloved. The writing was quite eloquent.
ReplyDeleteBrenda
One quote I love very much is from Mother Teresa.
ReplyDelete"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
― Mother Teresa
Beautifully sad but beautifully true... the closest someone has come to describing my love and my grief for my mother.... one line by Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Poem Dirge Without Music.
ReplyDeleteMore precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
1157 comments, can you imagine!
ReplyDeleteI love your little cubbyhole cabinet and I love this post! And I do think The Kitchen Congregation was one of the most moving food memoirs I've ever read. It's funny, I was so taken with the author that I checked a stack of her mother's novels out of the library years ago after reading KC and I had to force myself to finish a couple, did not care for her books at all. And I remember checking a large book of Derek Walcott's poems out of the library after reading Love After Love in a book--was it Shell Seekers or Romancing the Ordianary? Anyway, try as I might, none of the other poems in his book touched me in the way that this one did. That poem became a guiding force to me during my 60s, like it was written just for me. You probably feel that way too, which shows the power of the written word.
I think the prettiest sentence I ever heard is a verse from the Bible that I read in my teens from the old KJV: A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." Only back then, I misread it as saying "pitchers of silver". It was such a word picture in addition to being packed with wisdom.
Lovely post, Melanie!
What a wonderful post, Melanie. I,too, am touched by words and they paint stories for me in my mind.
ReplyDeleteI have so many quotes and things saved but this one just jumped into my mind (again). I found it so very touching:
and even when the heart falls silent, we do not cease to be. because, in the end, we all become memories... <3 "call the midwife"
Have a wonderful evening, Melanie. xo Diana
I had to order The Kitchen Congregation! Thank you! I went to the new Little Women film and I loved the sets, costumes (including the hand knits) and the tables set in lovely dishes and foods. I have to open my Little Women again.
ReplyDelete