Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee;
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth
In nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.
-teresa of avila
in a grave they laid thee,
o my life and my Christ:
and the armies of the angels were
amazed,
as they sang the praise of thy submissive love.
who will give me water
for the tears i must weep?
so the maiden wed to God crieth with
loud lament,
that for my sweet Jesus i may rightly mourn.
i am rent with grief,
and my hearrt with woe is crushed and broken,
as i see them slay thee with doom unjust;
so bewailing Him His grieving Mother cried.
dirges at the tomb
goodly joesph sings with nicodemus,
bringing praise to Christ who by men
was slain,
and in song with them are joined the
seraphim.
ev’ry generation
to thy grave comes bringing
Dear Christ, its dirge of praises.
death Himself by thy Death
o my God, hast thou slain
by power of thy Godhead
grant thy Church peace,
and thy flock Salvation,
by thy resurrection.
-st ephraim the syrian
“For a person to become a Christian he must have a poetic soul.
He must become a poet.
Christ does not wish insensitive souls in His company.
A Christian, albeit only when he loves,
is a poet and lives amid poetry.
Poetic hearts embrace love and sense it deeply.”
-Elder Porphyrios
metropolitan jonah at the 
two thousand and nince southern diocese conference
he spoke on spiritual maturity
[Mortals] say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.
And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death.
-css [the great divorce]
i find you, Lord, in all Things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.
the wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world;
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.
-rilke
i give You thanks,
to me You are a light that knows no evening,
a sun that never sets.
You cannot remain hidden,
for You fill all things with your glory.
You never hide Yourself from anyone,
but we are always hiding from You,
not wishing to come near You.
For where could You hide Yourself,
since You have no place
in which to take Your rest?
Or why should You hide,
since You turn away from no one
and are afraid of none?
-sstnt
I am not acquainted with anyone
there, if they spoke to me
I would not know what to do.
but so far nobody has, I know
I certainly wouldn’t.
I don’t participate, I’m not allowed;
I just listen and every morning
have a moment of such happiness, I breathe
and breathe until the terror returns, about the time
when they are supposed to greet one another
two people actually look into each other’s eyes
And hold hands a moment, but
the church is so big and the few who are there
are seated far apart. So this presents no real problem.
I keep my eyes fixed on the great naked corpse, the vertical
corpse
who is said to be love
and who spoke the world
into being, before coming here
to be tortured and executed by it.
I don’t know what I am doing there. I do
notice the more I lose touch
with what I previously saw as my life
the more real my spot in the dark winter pew becomes-
it is infinite. What we experience
as space, the sky
that is, the sun, the stars
is intimate and rather small by comparison.
when I step outside the ugliness is so shattering
it has become dear to me, like a retarded
child, precious to me.
if only I could tell someone.
the humiliation I go through
when I think of my past
can only be described as grace.
we are created by being destroyed…
-mr wright
Men can do me no evil as long as I bear no wound.
I saw two caves, one of which gave off an echo, while the other was dumb. Many curious children visited the former, incessantly engaged in shouting matches with the cave. But visitors quickly left the other cave, because it gave them no echo in return.
If my soul is wounded, every worldly evil will resound within it. And people will laugh at me, and will bear more and more strongly on me with their shouting.
But evil-speaking people will not really harm me, if my tongue has forgotten how to form evil words.
Nor will external malice sadden me, if there is no malice in my heart to resound like a goatskin drum.
Nor shall I be able to respond to wrath with wrath if the lair of wrath within me has been vacated and there is nothing to be aroused.
Nor will human passions titillate me if the passions within me have been turned to ashes.
Nor will the untruthfulness of friends sadden me if I have chosen Thee for my friend.
Nor can the injustice of the world overwhelm me if injustice has been banished from my thoughts.
Nor will the deceitful spirits of worldly pleasure, honor and power delude me, if my soul is like a spotless bride, who receives only the Holy Spirit and yearns for Him alone.
Men cannot send anyone off to hell unless that person sends himself, nor can men hoist anyone up on their shoulders to the throne of God, unless that person elevates himself.
If my soul has no open windows, no mud can be thrown into it.
Let all nature rise up against me; it can do nothing to me except a single thing — to become as soon as possible the grave of my body.
Every worldly crop is covered with manure, so that it will sprout as soon as possible and grow better. If my soul were, alas, to abandon its virginity and receive the seed of this world into itself, then it would also have to accept the manure that the world casts on its fields.
But I call upon Thee day and night: “Come, dwell in my soul and close all the places where my enemies can enter. Make the cavern of my soul empty and dumb, so that no one from the world will desire to enter it.”
O my soul, my only care, be on guard and learn to distinguish between the voices that smite your ears. Once you hear the voice of your Lord, abandon your dumbness and echo it with all your strength.
O my soul, thou cavern of eternity, never allow temporal thieves to enter into thee and kindle their fire within thee. Be dumb when they shout at you. Stay still when they bang on you, and patiently await your Master — for He will truly come.
[random quotes of goodness]
There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on.
But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is.
And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.
——–
‘You mean,’ said the Tragedian, ‘you mean – you did not love me truly in the old days.’
Only in a poor sort of way,’ she answered. ‘I have asked you to forgive me. There was a little real love in it. But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you.’
‘And now!’ said the Tragedian with a hackneyed gesture of despair. ‘Now, you need me no more?’
‘But of course not!’ said the Lady; and her smile made me wonder how [the phantom] could refrain from crying out with joy.
‘What needs could I have,’ she said, ‘now that I have all? I am full now, not empty. I am in Love Himself, not lonely. Strong, not weak. You shall be the same. Come and see. We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.’
The BBC International News Pontifications