The 60-Second Sabbath

The Wonder-Filled Life

The spiritual life
is lived in wonder.

Faith calls us to amazement,
to awe:

    waves pound;
    babies burble;
    cicadas buzz;
    ferns unfurl;

    hearts crack;
    wounds heal;
    truth wins;
    love endures.

Open,
you,
to the worshipful wow.

Text and image © 2015 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Voice of the Mountain

"It's the wind," he told me,
"nothing more."

But I'd heard the voice,
deep and resonant and beckoning.
I could not make out all the words...

"Wind," he repeated.

...but could tell--
just by the tone--
it's old, wise, weary.

"The mountain has no voice,
and you have an overactive imagination."

It spoke again,
raising the hair on my arms,
shivering along my spine,
tousling my hair.
"He's wrong," it said.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

The Pier

I stand at the end of the pier,
face to the dark and the wind.
Waves roll toward me,
each one another tomorrow--
identical tomorrows,
endless.
I feel chilled;
the wind, the waves, the loneliness
empty me.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Photography 10

I finally understand.

I photograph
stillness.

And when I do,
I receive
stillness.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Photography 3

Today,
let a good photo
be your text
for prayer.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Invitation 3

Today
I invite you
to meet Wisdom
in silence
and discover
how extraordinary she is.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Dismissal

Give me a balcony
(somewhere on the East coast of Mexico),
air scented with hidden hyacinth
(sweet, exotic, sensual),
a waning moon and the evening's first star
(just freed from the hazy horizon),
and a fresh-pressed volume of poetry
(Rumi? Oliver? Collins?).

You may leave now.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Winter Meal

Beyond these windows,
just two feet from me,
the temperature is five below.

Incidental flakes sift down
unenthusiastically;
this meager snow's merely the side dish,
lightly tossed.

The cold's the main thing,
the entree:
a big slab of frigid, served raw,
biting back.

And for dessert?
A slice of "slide to work."

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Pines

This was my stand of pines,
my sanctuary,
my refuge from adolescent angst.
Here I knelt
and inhaled stability.

Now they are stumps.

Do slaughtered trees leave ghosts?
I am haunted by the stickiness of pitch
and the scent of sun-warmed needles.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Walls

At dusk
I come upon the ruins
of an ancient wall.
It's graying rocks,
lichen-covered and rain-smoothed,
rise like disintegrating teeth
above the black-eyed Susans
and Queen Anne's lace
of the field.

Whose hands gathered and stacked these stones
and to what purpose?
Was I to be kept out?
Were you to be kept in?
And who fell first,
    the wall
    or its builders?

At dawn,
returning to the field,
I can not find the wall.
Sparrows chatter,
greeting me as they seek seed.
"May it be thus,"
they say,
"with all the barriers
your kind erects."

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.