#birth

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong. Think rather,--call to thought, if now you grieve a little, The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long. Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn; Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry: Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born. Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason, I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun. Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season: Let us endure an hour and see injustice done. Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation; All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain: Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation-- Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again? ↗

— A.E. Housman

#birth #death #emotion #grief #heaven-and-earth

Why should insurance companies continue to get away with limiting the skills that a health profession has always previously required of its members if they were to be considered fully trained? ↗

— Ina May Gaskin

#money #politics #money

This is your birthday treat, and you're supposed to enjoy it, I reminded myself. It was part of my normal existence to give myself instructions like this. Maybe other people acted and lived in total naturalness. I often wondered if they did. But me? I needed an operating manual. ↗

— Lauren Myracle

#enjoy #life-instructions #operating-manual #life

Satan casts out Satan, it is only to enter afresh in a mightier, though more hidden power. Nothing can avail but this, that the new nature in its divine humility be revealed in power to take the place of the old, to become as truly our very nature as that ever was. ↗

— Andrew Murray

#regeneration #nature

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#death #grief #grieving #loss #miscarriage

Hope drowned in shadows emerges fiercely splendid–– boldly angelic. ↗

— Aberjhani

#angels #courage #faith #haiku #haikus

Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire, I was reborn a third time to the sound of my name humming haikus in heaven’s mouth. ↗

— Aberjhani

#dignity #faith #haiku #heaven #human-mortality

He knows he will be born again, And start fresh anew. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#born-again #circling #dejan-stojanovic #fresh #fresh-start

But after years of teaching, we have decided that a lot of mothers just aren't reading textbooks. ↗

— Susan McCutcheon-Rosegg

#nature

Birth was the death of him. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#death #him