Meditation

Visiting the Graveyard –Mary Oliver from her collection entitled, “Red Bird”

When I think of death
it is a bright enough city,
and every year more faces there
are familiar

but not a single one
notices me,
though I long for it,
and when they talk together,

which they do
very quietly,
it’s in an unknowable language–
I can catch the tone

but understand not a single word–
and when I open my eyes
there’s the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.
There are the stones.

Blessing the Dust –Jan Richardson (Source: Painted Prayer Book from Blessing the Dust)

… So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear