Poem Book – A Sharing of Friends – 2015
December 30th, 2015
My books group, which is really a friendship circle of the deepest kind, shares poems every December. The poems are put together as works of art, which we give each other as gifts.
This year the five of us each chose one poem to share. Instead of creating our poem collections beforehand we decided to make poem books on the night of sharing. We gathered together to share a meal and friendship, and to do an art project. We each created an origami book from one large sheet of paper and put the poems inside. We used sumi and acrylic inks for the colors. Each large sheet of paper, folded into a book was created with different strokes and colors. Here is mine, with the cover above.
Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light – by Jan Richardson
Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.
Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes—
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith
in stubborn hope
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.
The Peace of Wild Things – by Wendell Berry
A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight,
a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs,
when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them.
An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because
its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through
understanding and mercy…
In the course of the years a close friendship will always reveal
the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends
we must know the other and their difficulties and even their sins
and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through
addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge
of their incarnation…
not heard that way before and not to be
repeated or ever be remembered
one that always had been a household word
used in speaking of the ordinary
everyday recurrences of living
not newly chosen or long considered
or a matter for comment afterward
who would ever have thought it was the one
saying itself from the beginning through
all its uses and circumstances to
utter at last that meaning of its own
for which it had long been the only word
though it seems now that any word would do
our one work is
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Poem book opened showing front and back covers.
I cherish this book and all the other poem collections my dearest friends and I have shared over the years.
HAPPY NEW YEAR – May 2016 bring you peace, love, health and the deepest of friendships.
ENJOY & CREATE