3 Reasons to be a Bird

illustrator: George Velez

3 reasons to be a bird:

1 feathers

2 flight

3 light and balanced

Making Love

Making love in Spring is “certain”!
Try it hanging from a tree, squirrel-y.!
Rabbit it in jumps in grass!
Pumping in a flash: gray and fur-y.!

“making” by Jeanne Poland

First Day of Spring

photo by J Byron Schachner

orange and turquoise

nature’s symphony: blue sky

with gold sunflowers

Deeper

illustrator Neil Waldman

History

by Andrew Gent

Every poem has been written before
at least fifteen times.
Every song
sung better.

The Neanderthals discovered caves
already painted with the story of their lives.
They invented fire
over and over again.

And you & I
whisper the same sweet nothings
we were born with.

“History” by Andrew Gent from Explicit Lyrics. © The University of Arkansas Press, 2016.

Wings

With Their Wings

by Jean Nordhaus

                    —for Delia

On the evening you were born,
after the tremendous churning
that brought you forth, an owl
flew onto the rail of the balcony
where we sat, as darkness bled
from backlit hills into the sky.
In twilight, she perched on the ledge
measured us with wide, light-

gleaning eyes, then sailed off
on soft wings. Shades of my mother,
I thought, half-believing—the wide-
set eyes and level gaze.

For those who say the dead
have no more truck with us
are wrong. The dead are all around us
feathering the air with their wings.
They see in the fertile darkness
that surrounds this sac of light.
And in these hours we call them back
to steady us, who live in time.

“With Their Wings” by Jean Nordhaus from Memos from the Broken World. © Mayapple Press, 2016.

Forest

Lost

by David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Christmas Creche

St. Francis was a Roman Catholic friar and preacher. He’d recently completed a trip to the Holy Land. Inspired by his visit to Jesus’s traditional birthplace, he wanted to create something to honor the birth of Christ that the villagers of Greccio could take part in. At that time, Mass was in Latin, which only the clergy understood, so during the Middle Ages, “Mystery” and “Miracle” plays were created as ways to teach Scripture to laypeople. They were popular and educational, and Francis thought he could use that idea to entertain the villagers of Greccio.

He received the blessing of Pope Honorius II, gathered an ass and a donkey, found some villagers to play Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus, and staged the whole thing in a cave outside Greccio. He drew quite a crowd and preached about the “babe of Bethlehem.” His living Nativity was such a hit that the hay he used as a crib for baby Jesus miraculously acquired the power to cure cattle diseases and various pestilences.

Greet the Unknown With A Cheer

Pollyanna cheers:

Greet the unknown galantly

On, under water!

After the publication of a best-selling sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915), Eleanor Hodgman Porter became somewhat defensive about the character she’d created. She said: “You know I have been made to suffer from the Pollyanna books. … People have thought that Pollyanna chirped that she was ‘glad’ at everything. … I have never believed that we ought to deny discomfort and pain and evil; I have merely thought that it is far better to ‘greet the unknown with a cheer.’”

Gifts of the Holy Spirit

knowledge

wisdom

prophecy

faith

healings

miracles

discerning spirits

gift of tongues

interpretation of tongues

Fruits of the Spirit

charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, long- suffering, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity