The Advances of the Sea: Stephane Brozek Cordier

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Rev. Dawn Hutchings

Stephane Brozek Cordier poetry captures the ebb and flow of longing for wholeness.

I Carry Your Heart With Me: e e cummings

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Rev. Dawn Hutchings

Inner History of a Day: by John O’Donohue

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Rev. Dawn Hutchings

John O’Donohue was an Irish, mystic, philosopher, poet whose way with words opens hearts and minds to eternity.

While All the Others Were Away at Mass – Seamus Heaney

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Rev. Dawn Hutchings

Seamus Heaney died on Friday. A poet who captured my heart long ago when I was just a wee girl too frightened to trust my own words. Perhaps I learned to love his verse because we held Belfast in common? But the streets he strode upon were a lifetimes away from the streets I trod, with only the “wideness of his language” to implant his thoughts in my heart. While others will point to his Nobel Prize, Digging, The North, or September 1969 to herald him as a laureate, for me it will be a bag of spuds waiting to be peeled that will bring his words to mind. Rest well dear Seamus. Thank-you for teaching me to write my own words upon the page and trust that they too had a wideness about them! Shalom.

Dust – Dorianne Laux

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Rev. Dawn Hutchings

Penetrating Blue Moon

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Rev. Dawn Hutchings

Away from the bright lights of the city

the stars shine more deeply

penetrating cares and woes.

Then there is the moon:

the prognosticators announced that it would be blue,

as in once in a blue…

But I see only a light that penetrates deeply

with the power

to change the tides of my being

in ways that make my spirit sing.

“Poetry Knows We are Both Living and Dying at the Same Time” Marie Howe

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Rev. Dawn Hutchings

“Marie Howe’s poetry is luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life. Her long, deep-breathing lines address the mysteries of flesh and spirit, in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred.” —Stanley Kunitz

Vacation’s gift of time has invited me to open a book of poetry. Poetry has no need to provide all the words. Poetry has only to provide the words to open us to ourselves. Marie Howe’s latest collection “The Kingdom of Ordinary Time” has won for her the role of New York State Poet Laureate. Who knew states had laureates? Her words have gently opened me to myself. After posting this, I shall return to my bookshelves to unearth the collection in which Howe opened me to that which lives in and beyond me: “What the living do”.