Thomas Merton, from "Seasons of Celebration"

“…The year is not just another year: it is the year of the Lord—a year in which the passage of time itself brings us not only the natural renewal of spring and the fruitfulness of an earthly summer, but also the spiritual and interior fruitfulness of grace.”

Proust on Charity, from the "Combray" Section of "Swann's Way"

“…When, later, I had occasion to meet, in the course of my life, in convents for instance, truly saintly embodiments of practical charity, they generally had the cheerful, positive, indifferent, and brusque air of a busy surgeon, the sort of face in which one can read no commiseration, no pity in the face of human suffering, no fear of offending it, the sort which is the ungentle face, the antipathetic and sublime face of true goodness.”

- Marcel Proust,

Marie Howe - "Easter"

Two of the fingers on his right hand
had been broken

so when he poured back into that hand it surprised
him—it hurt him at first.

And the whole body was too small. Imagine
the sky trying to fit into a tunnel carved into a hill.

He came into it two ways:
From the outside, as we step into a pair of pants.

And from the center—suddenly all at once.
Then he felt himself awake in the dark alone.

- Marie Howe

Good Friday

“…And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils;
freely ye have received, freely give…”

- from Matthew 10:7-8

James Wright - "The Journey"

Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind the town,
We too were swept out, out by the wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.

Wind had been blowing across the hills
For days, and everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything we saw, even
Some small children scampering along a road,
Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.

We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,
And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.

I found the spider web there, whose hinges
Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,
Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging
And scattering shadows among shells and wings.
And then she stepped into the center of air
Slender and fastidious, the golden hair
Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,
While ruins crumbled on every side of her.
Free of the dust, as though a moment before
She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.

I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped
Away in her own good time.

Many men
Have searched all over Tuscany and never found
What I found there, the heart of the light
Itself shelled and leaved, balancing
On filaments themselves falling. The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins, and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who surely
Will bury their own, don't worry.

- James Wright

Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn, in "Anne of the Thousand Days"

“For six years—this year, and this, and this, and this—I did not love him.
And then I did. Then I was his. I can count the days I was his in hundreds.

The days we bedded. Married. Were Happy. Bore Elizabeth.
Hated. Lusted. Bore a dead child... which condemned me...

In all one thousand days. Just a thousand. Strange.
And of those thousand, one when we were both in love,
only one, when our loves met and overlapped and were both mine and his.
And when I no longer hated him, he began to hate me.
Except for that one day.”