words are beautiful

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.

 (Ernest Hemmingway)

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

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!