“I hold you deep within that well”
Hopeful words from a new pope, prayers for difficult days, & a poem for all of us
Switching it up again and sending this week’s round-up of others’ holy labors today for your weekend reading. This week I’ll get back on track with another round-up on Wednesday as usual—and an essay for paid subscribers on Saturday. It’s a good one, not gonna lie, so if you need a shot of resurrection hope, sign up now to make sure you get it next week.
You know I love theological fun facts. After this week’s essay on the Room of Tears went unexpectedly viral, I learned that the black cassock worn by Catholic priests—and in white by the pope—always has 33 buttons for the 33 years of Jesus’ life. How cool is that?
Pope Leo XVI’s first words to the world deserve to be read again and again. “God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail! All of us are in God’s hands. So, let us move forward, without fear, together, hand in hand with God and with one another!”
Humans of New York is pure joy. If you haven’t followed Brandon Stanton’s photography from the beginning, now is the second-best time to jump aboard. This week’s simple post was so compelling: “As bad as the world is, it would be much worse if there weren’t people who had fought back all these millennia. We don’t know about them all, but you can be sure that they were there.”
I’ve written much on motherhood over the years on Mother’s Day, so if you need a litany to feel less alone (in Spanish and English) or a reminder that mothers hold multitudes within them, here you go. Even an essay I wrote on the injustice of “just” a mother.
But to end today, here’s a poem that holds each of us within it. May tomorrow simply bring you a reminder that you have been held within Love, no matter where you find yourself today.
Woman To Child
You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.
There moved the multitudinous stars,
and coloured birds and fishes moved.
There swam the sliding continents.
All time lay rolled in me, and sense,
and love that knew not its beloved.
O node and focus of the world;
I hold you deep within that well
you shall escape and not escape—
that mirrors still your sleeping shape;
that nurtures still your crescent cell.
I wither and you break from me;
yet though you dance in living light
I am the earth, I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night.
—by Judith Wright, Australian poet, environmental activist, and activist for Aboriginal land rights
Well “said” thank you very much ,James🙏