Hildegard of Bingen, Antiphon for the Angels

Spirited light! on the edge

of the Presence your yearning
burns in the secret darkness,
O angels, insatiably
into Gods gaze.
Perversity
could not touch your beauty;
you are essential joy.
But your lost companion,
angel of the crooked
wings he sought the summit,
shot down the depths of God
and plummeted past Adam
that a mud bound spirit might soar.
John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Walt Whitman, Miracles

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the
water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so
quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swimthe rocksthe motion of the wavesthe
ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

Thomas Merton, In Stillness

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.
Listen
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?
Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.
Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.
O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you
speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.
I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?

Kahil Gibran, The Prophet

On Religion
And an old priest said, "Speak to us of Religion."
And he said:
Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and
a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the
stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his
occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and
this for myself;
This for my soul, and this other for my body?"
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to
self.
He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better
naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his songbird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to
shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are
from dawn to dawn.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute,
The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.
For in revery you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall
lower than your failures.
And take with you all men:
For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor
humble yourself lower than their despair.
And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your
children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud,
outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His
hands in trees.