-
-
-
Out of somewhere
light finds its way
in
whether I stop for it
or not.
the wedding
- -
We planned and rehearsed.
It took a lot of coordinating.
Some things didn't go according to plan. For instance, Don planted a thousand sunflowers, some for the ceremony site, some behind the barn for cutting for the reception tables. These by the ceremony bloomed. The hundreds behind the barn did not. What would we do for the reception tables? All those empty canning jars, bottles and vases we'd collected.
The morning of the wedding Don welcomed the fellow with the straw bales for a farm wagon our good neighbor Bill loaned us. I watched Don climb high up to help the power line stay clear. I pictured him breaking a leg.
We set up table and chair groupings around the yard with the chairs we collected through Freecycle. Remember when we were going to collect enough chairs for all the guests? We didn't get that far. You can see rental chairs set up for the ceremony there in front of the tent. We used old doors we found in the barn on straw bales for tables.
Flowers from the florist waited in my studio.
Lesley's paper lanterns floated and tossed in the wind that started picking up on Saturday. Clouds accumulated, the sky darkened. The wedding was at 6, and by 5:30 we had phone calls from folks driving in through a torrential downpour. We women were in the house getting dolled up, and Lesley and I tried not to stress about rain.
By the time guests arrived, a soft rain had begun to fall. The chairs had been moved from the original ceremony site into the tent around tables. Most guests never knew it was meant to be outside.
They picked up their table seating cards from the laundry line.
A few minutes after 6 it was time to go! Don and I escorted Lesley from the house to the tent in the sweet rain, under a big golf umbrella. The photographer wouldn't let my hair get wet, although with all the product on it I don't think anything could touch it, nor could it possibly frizz.
The ceremony inside was cozy and romantic under the high reach of the tent.
Lesley's dad and grandpa, and Brian's grandpa (pictured here) joined them in planting a wedding plum tree. At that moment I knew the rain was a blessing, watering the tree at the start of a new marriage. Several guests informed me that rain is considered auspicious for a wedding.
Many people expressed how special the rain was. And I agree.
When the couple were married and the ceremony ended, the rain had stopped.
It was time for appetizers, wedding portraits and running around the farm.
This wedding arbor Don built saw a lot of people walk under and get their pictures taken.
Guests sat and chatted at the seating areas. These are Brian's relatives from Texas, including his mom in brown. Lesley is so fortunate to have Julia for a mother-in-law.
My three sisters and I had our picture taken with our daughters.
These vintage windows from the farm were hung with some snapshots of Lesley and Brian.
Lesley's brother Peter was Man of Honor, and her best friend since age 10 Michelle was Matron of Honor. If happy, fun energy made the world go 'round, these three alone would keep it in operation.
Peter was also in charge of the music at the reception and played his guitar in the ceremony. The wedding party processed to "Viva la Vida" the Coldplay song, Peter playing it on guitar.
It was fantastic connecting with old friends we don't see often, as well as family from distant places. Dennis, below, was Best Man at our wedding.
My dear friend Inge made the rounds. Here she is with my nephew Nathan who officiated the ceremony.
Twenty-five percent of the guests were children. You think they didn't love Don's birds?
I wish someone had gotten a picture of just the parking lot next door. Our neighbors let us use their field.
When the sun set and the moon rose, the tent and the farm became like a fairyland. I love this photo of my nephew Paul's.
Don and I completely missed the cutting of the cake. We were looking for crayons and paper for the kids playing in the studio. You can see that there are sunflowers on tables. At our suggestion, a few guests cut some of the ones by the original ceremony site and placed them in the glass vessels.
Lesley's cousin Todd and his wife Lisle were host and hostess. Lisle is a teacher, so they played the role of teacher and principal, it was so cute.
I wish I could dance. Well, I did dance, but that doesn't mean I can dance. Now Julia, Brian's mom above in the brown silk suit, she can dance. Peter's playlist was fabulous, and I think most of the guests danced, especially the kids. He had some special songs so Julia could show us her line dance steps. I have no idea where they got all their energy. You can see Nicholas here dancing at Peter with his grandma, my sister Ginnie, looking on.
What is a wedding?
Is it flowers? Hairdos? Lights, cake and a lovely homily? The loving, attentive guests who fly in from around the country?
Yes, those things make up a wedding. But the marriage - now that it is different matter entirely. But wow, I love how this one began.
I have to acknowledge the "it would not have been possible without them" gang:
Lesley (planning) Brian (planning)
Don (everything)
Peter (music, painting, cleaning, organizing, humor)
Nancy (envisioning, planning, scraping, painting, cleaning, sweeping, light hanging, what did I miss . . .)
Jennifer (painting, weeding, weeding and weeding)
Bootsie (scraping, painting, staining, photographing, what did I miss . . . )
Grandpa (hanging windows)
Pam (lights, etc.)
Barb (lights, etc.)
Sally (lights, etc.)
Dan (lights, etc.)
Diane (lights, etc.)
Mike (lights, hanging windows, barman, etc.)
Chadd (bar - oops)
DeeDee (taking pictures with my camera)
Special thanks to Bootsie (Ginnie), Paul and Jaclyn for sharing their photos. I did not have my camera in hand, of course. And the official photographer's images are a couple of weeks away. I tried to label each picture with their names, but I had a hard time with formatting and gave up, I apologize to the photographers. You can see their albums at the sites below.
Ginnie's wedding album is here.
Paul's wedding album is here.
We planned and rehearsed.
It took a lot of coordinating.
Some things didn't go according to plan. For instance, Don planted a thousand sunflowers, some for the ceremony site, some behind the barn for cutting for the reception tables. These by the ceremony bloomed. The hundreds behind the barn did not. What would we do for the reception tables? All those empty canning jars, bottles and vases we'd collected.
The morning of the wedding Don welcomed the fellow with the straw bales for a farm wagon our good neighbor Bill loaned us. I watched Don climb high up to help the power line stay clear. I pictured him breaking a leg.
We set up table and chair groupings around the yard with the chairs we collected through Freecycle. Remember when we were going to collect enough chairs for all the guests? We didn't get that far. You can see rental chairs set up for the ceremony there in front of the tent. We used old doors we found in the barn on straw bales for tables.
Flowers from the florist waited in my studio.
Lesley's paper lanterns floated and tossed in the wind that started picking up on Saturday. Clouds accumulated, the sky darkened. The wedding was at 6, and by 5:30 we had phone calls from folks driving in through a torrential downpour. We women were in the house getting dolled up, and Lesley and I tried not to stress about rain.
By the time guests arrived, a soft rain had begun to fall. The chairs had been moved from the original ceremony site into the tent around tables. Most guests never knew it was meant to be outside.
They picked up their table seating cards from the laundry line.
The ceremony inside was cozy and romantic under the high reach of the tent.
Lesley's dad and grandpa, and Brian's grandpa (pictured here) joined them in planting a wedding plum tree. At that moment I knew the rain was a blessing, watering the tree at the start of a new marriage. Several guests informed me that rain is considered auspicious for a wedding.
Many people expressed how special the rain was. And I agree.
When the couple were married and the ceremony ended, the rain had stopped.
It was time for appetizers, wedding portraits and running around the farm.
This wedding arbor Don built saw a lot of people walk under and get their pictures taken.
Guests sat and chatted at the seating areas. These are Brian's relatives from Texas, including his mom in brown. Lesley is so fortunate to have Julia for a mother-in-law.
My three sisters and I had our picture taken with our daughters.
These vintage windows from the farm were hung with some snapshots of Lesley and Brian.
Lesley's brother Peter was Man of Honor, and her best friend since age 10 Michelle was Matron of Honor. If happy, fun energy made the world go 'round, these three alone would keep it in operation.
Peter was also in charge of the music at the reception and played his guitar in the ceremony. The wedding party processed to "Viva la Vida" the Coldplay song, Peter playing it on guitar.
It was fantastic connecting with old friends we don't see often, as well as family from distant places. Dennis, below, was Best Man at our wedding.
My dear friend Inge made the rounds. Here she is with my nephew Nathan who officiated the ceremony.
Twenty-five percent of the guests were children. You think they didn't love Don's birds?
I wish someone had gotten a picture of just the parking lot next door. Our neighbors let us use their field.
When the sun set and the moon rose, the tent and the farm became like a fairyland. I love this photo of my nephew Paul's.
What is a wedding?
Is it flowers? Hairdos? Lights, cake and a lovely homily? The loving, attentive guests who fly in from around the country?
Yes, those things make up a wedding. But the marriage - now that it is different matter entirely. But wow, I love how this one began.
I have to acknowledge the "it would not have been possible without them" gang:
Lesley (planning) Brian (planning)
Don (everything)
Peter (music, painting, cleaning, organizing, humor)
Nancy (envisioning, planning, scraping, painting, cleaning, sweeping, light hanging, what did I miss . . .)
Jennifer (painting, weeding, weeding and weeding)
Bootsie (scraping, painting, staining, photographing, what did I miss . . . )
Grandpa (hanging windows)
Pam (lights, etc.)
Barb (lights, etc.)
Sally (lights, etc.)
Dan (lights, etc.)
Diane (lights, etc.)
Mike (lights, hanging windows, barman, etc.)
Chadd (bar - oops)
DeeDee (taking pictures with my camera)
Special thanks to Bootsie (Ginnie), Paul and Jaclyn for sharing their photos. I did not have my camera in hand, of course. And the official photographer's images are a couple of weeks away. I tried to label each picture with their names, but I had a hard time with formatting and gave up, I apologize to the photographers. You can see their albums at the sites below.
Ginnie's wedding album is here.
Paul's wedding album is here.
ripe
-
-
The time has almost come. One week from tomorrow our first child will be married.
The second she was born 28 years ago, her eyes shone big, round and clear. They say newborn eyes can't focus well, but whatever the birthing room's morning light fell upon, she seemed to absorb and approve of through those little portholes of hers. She has always been ready to take in as much of the world as she can fit.
Before she learned to walk, she learned to run. We never used a leash, but maybe that would have preserved a year or two of our lives.
At age 6, shortly after we moved to Istanbul, she corrected my halting Turkish when I misunderstood our door woman - stating sweetly, "No, mommy, she asked if you wanted bread delivered today."
When we returned to the U.S., she fell in love with Elijah Wood and decided to become a marine biologist after seeing "Flipper," maybe hoping that would get her closer to him.
For a while she preferred her hair pink or blue to its natural medium brown. She wore army boots with skirts. I'm ashamed to say I was embarrassed when people stared at her extravagantly in our conservative town. That embarrassment was so much more about me than her. But I did let her have pink hair.
She dove into mosh pits. She totalled a car. She changed majors at community college until she found Design. She exploded beauty out her fingertips, and Art School sent her to the Furniture Design show in Milan. She got a job and moved to New York.
She fell in love, this time with a Philosopher, not a Movie Star - thank goodness. We fell in love with him too. With our family and friends we will witness their vows, toast their long happiness and dance until midnight. The fireflies will watch us from the tops of the black locust trees, and I will watch for your eyes too from the lower tree limbs of the orchard, you enthusiastic friends who have touched me with your interest and support. And then back to real life - the work of taking in the world as much as we can fit.
I will see you after the wedding and share moments of the day - of course!
All my love.
-
The time has almost come. One week from tomorrow our first child will be married.
The second she was born 28 years ago, her eyes shone big, round and clear. They say newborn eyes can't focus well, but whatever the birthing room's morning light fell upon, she seemed to absorb and approve of through those little portholes of hers. She has always been ready to take in as much of the world as she can fit.
Before she learned to walk, she learned to run. We never used a leash, but maybe that would have preserved a year or two of our lives.
At age 6, shortly after we moved to Istanbul, she corrected my halting Turkish when I misunderstood our door woman - stating sweetly, "No, mommy, she asked if you wanted bread delivered today."
When we returned to the U.S., she fell in love with Elijah Wood and decided to become a marine biologist after seeing "Flipper," maybe hoping that would get her closer to him.
For a while she preferred her hair pink or blue to its natural medium brown. She wore army boots with skirts. I'm ashamed to say I was embarrassed when people stared at her extravagantly in our conservative town. That embarrassment was so much more about me than her. But I did let her have pink hair.
She dove into mosh pits. She totalled a car. She changed majors at community college until she found Design. She exploded beauty out her fingertips, and Art School sent her to the Furniture Design show in Milan. She got a job and moved to New York.
She fell in love, this time with a Philosopher, not a Movie Star - thank goodness. We fell in love with him too. With our family and friends we will witness their vows, toast their long happiness and dance until midnight. The fireflies will watch us from the tops of the black locust trees, and I will watch for your eyes too from the lower tree limbs of the orchard, you enthusiastic friends who have touched me with your interest and support. And then back to real life - the work of taking in the world as much as we can fit.
I will see you after the wedding and share moments of the day - of course!
All my love.
Carol Ann Duffy: first female Poet Laureate of Britain
- -
Not that I was paying any attention to who were British poets laureate up till now (don't mean to sound proud of that), but for the first time in 341 years the Brits have honored a woman as poet laureate. John Dryden 1631-1700, below, was the first. (Others were Tennyson, Wordsworth, Ted Hughes. It is a surprisingly short list - 19 - considering the span of time, but since appointments were for life, some served decades after their appointments.) The New York Times piece about Duffy's ten-year appointment is here. The news has been out a while, but I had stopped reading newspapers online when my job got stressful in March. Do you do that? Stop reading the news when you're blinded with stress? Then I got happily distracted by the upcoming wedding. Anyway, I started writing this back in May, and it kept getting pushed to the back burner. So it's old news by now, but maybe you missed it.
A Scottish playwright, poet and children's story writer (including adaptations of stories by the Brothers Grimm), as well as Creative Director of the Manchester Metropolitan University's Writing School, Duffy calls herself “a poet and a mother — that’s all” and is both popular and brilliant. Apparently she took the job only because she would be the first woman in the role.
Meager book reader that I am - so no reflection on her or her popularity - I had neither heard of Duffy nor read any of her poems. If I lived in the UK I would have known her as the most popular poet for the past decade. I see that she has written some wonderful, edgy story poems, some of them about imagined wives of famous men.
Four things I found out about Carol Ann Duffy that interest me:
UPON JULIA'S CLOTHES
by Robert Herrick
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free ;
O how that glittering taketh me !
If you don't like or usually read poems, why not give it a go? This is history, my dear. Well, and that's the name of one of Duffy's poems - rather heavy. Read it and feel something shift.
Not that I was paying any attention to who were British poets laureate up till now (don't mean to sound proud of that), but for the first time in 341 years the Brits have honored a woman as poet laureate. John Dryden 1631-1700, below, was the first. (Others were Tennyson, Wordsworth, Ted Hughes. It is a surprisingly short list - 19 - considering the span of time, but since appointments were for life, some served decades after their appointments.) The New York Times piece about Duffy's ten-year appointment is here. The news has been out a while, but I had stopped reading newspapers online when my job got stressful in March. Do you do that? Stop reading the news when you're blinded with stress? Then I got happily distracted by the upcoming wedding. Anyway, I started writing this back in May, and it kept getting pushed to the back burner. So it's old news by now, but maybe you missed it.A Scottish playwright, poet and children's story writer (including adaptations of stories by the Brothers Grimm), as well as Creative Director of the Manchester Metropolitan University's Writing School, Duffy calls herself “a poet and a mother — that’s all” and is both popular and brilliant. Apparently she took the job only because she would be the first woman in the role.
Meager book reader that I am - so no reflection on her or her popularity - I had neither heard of Duffy nor read any of her poems. If I lived in the UK I would have known her as the most popular poet for the past decade. I see that she has written some wonderful, edgy story poems, some of them about imagined wives of famous men.Four things I found out about Carol Ann Duffy that interest me:
- She's 53, close to my age.
- She was considered for the job of poet laureate ten years ago, but they didn't choose her because she is a Lesbian. (Wow, first female and first openly gay person in the role.) But she says the media have been making too much of this, and she's tired of the imagined controversy. (Andrew Motion was picked that round.)
- She's a mom - to 13-year-old, Ella. (Ella's father is the writer, Peter Benson, which indicates she is actually bi-sexual. NOTE: thank you for the correction in your comment, Ginnie. This does not necessarily indicate that.)
- Besides her annual salary of 5,700 pounds, she will get a traditional reward of a "butt of sack" — about 600 bottles of sherry, donated by the Sherry Institute of Spain (Ten Star Tapas is their online guide for cooking with sherry). Back when Dryden received his butt of sack, dark libraries with roaring fires were full of men mumbling in flat British dialogue, fingers pinching sherry glasses. I wonder what she'll do with it. Maybe she'd share some with me after the wedding when it's time to relax. I would want a fino, dry and light, none of that sweet Jerez Dulce. Remember Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado"? Amontillado is a bit darker than fino, because it is exposed to oxygen. I digress.
Her most famous collection of poems - it does sound intriguing - is the 1999 The World's Wife, a skeptical view of "great men" from the view of their wives, like Queen Herod, or Pope Joan, Mrs Lazarus and Mrs Foust. Mrs Darwin's words: "Seventh of April 1952, Went to the zoo. I said to him, 'Something about that chimpanzee over there reminds me of you.'"
Duffy's popularity with even teenagers in Britain, and now the attention she's garnering for being the first woman poet laureate (and the first openly gay one), seem to set her up nicely to educate the masses that poetry matters - as her predecessor Andrew Motion put it, poetry isn't a 
"weird addition to life but a primitive thing at the centre of life." In these days of Twitter poetry (hey, President Obama digs Urdu poetry; when did he have time to learn Urdu? I think it shouldn't be read in translation; I digress again) Duffy can remind us that poems should be NEW, kick us in the pants, shake up our brain synapses and leave us wondering why we never saw the world like that before - and yet as if you always knew it. But I'm not going to toss out my 17th Century Prose & Poetry anthology from college, which contains Dryden's essays, and also one of my favorite poems: "Upon Julia's Clothes" by Robert Herrick. Pretty sexy for 17th century (though Herrick died a bachelor). Oh wait. Shakespeare already showed us the 17th century was sexy.
"weird addition to life but a primitive thing at the centre of life." In these days of Twitter poetry (hey, President Obama digs Urdu poetry; when did he have time to learn Urdu? I think it shouldn't be read in translation; I digress again) Duffy can remind us that poems should be NEW, kick us in the pants, shake up our brain synapses and leave us wondering why we never saw the world like that before - and yet as if you always knew it. But I'm not going to toss out my 17th Century Prose & Poetry anthology from college, which contains Dryden's essays, and also one of my favorite poems: "Upon Julia's Clothes" by Robert Herrick. Pretty sexy for 17th century (though Herrick died a bachelor). Oh wait. Shakespeare already showed us the 17th century was sexy.UPON JULIA'S CLOTHES
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free ;
O how that glittering taketh me !
History
She woke up old at last, alone,
bones in a bed, not a tooth
in her head, half dead, shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her nightdress,
smelling of pee.
Slurped tea, stared
at her hand--twigs, stained gloves--
wheezed and coughed, pulled on
the coat that hung from a hook
on the door, lay on the sofa,
dozed, snored.
She was History.
She'd seen them ease him down
from the Cross, his mother gasping
for breath, as though his death
was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting,
spears in the earth;
been there
when the fisherman swore he was back
from the dead; seen the basilicas rise
in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched
for a hundred years as the air of Rome
turned into stone;
witnessed the wars,
the bloody crusades, knew them by date
and by name, Bannockburn, Passchendaele,
Babi Yar, Vietnam. She'd heard the last words
of the martyrs burnt at the stake, the murderers
hung by the neck,
seen up-close
how the saint whistled and spat in the flames,
how the dictator strutting and stuttering film
blew out his brains, how the children waved
their little hands from the trains. She woke again,
cold, in the dark,
in the empty house.
Bricks through the window now, thieves
in the night. When they rang on her bell
there was nobody there; fresh graffiti sprayed
on her door, shit wrapped in a newspaper posted
onto the floor.
echoes
-
-
and then a little bee
imitates
the shape of the lily's anthers
like open parentheses
and you know the parallels will go on
always
between them
as well as
between you and me
as we keep changing positions
to understand each other.
-
Colors echo
between a Norway maple and a tiger lily
between a Norway maple and a tiger lily
and then a little bee
imitates
the shape of the lily's anthers
like open parenthesesand you know the parallels will go on
always
between them
as well as
between you and me
as we keep changing positions
to understand each other.
I thought I could change the world. It took me a hundred years to figure out I can't change the world. I can only change Bessie. And, honey, that ain't easy either.
-
- Annie Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany, at 104 (as quoted in The SUN magazine's Sunbeams page, April 2009, Sunbeams are only in the hard copy I think)
Enjoy the good
-
-
It takes all of us to make a balanced world. But silly me I fight battles where there aren't any, usually little skirmishes inside my head and heart. I can tell someone not to compare themselves with anyone else, but I'm not as good at believing it for myself.
Prepping for Farm Wedding day right here where we live, I've watched my sister scrape, sand and paint the porch and deck four days straight. I've watched my niece weed the veggie and flower beds and paint the studio roof in the hot sun for hours on end. I've watched Don build a fence, straighten the barns and a dozen other tasks. I've watched Peter dig dirt, haul pea gravel, design a stoop for l'atelier and paint roofs. Me? I've watched myself float from laundry line to flower beds to the stove and the sink, all things I enjoy. I compare tasks, and mine come up short.
But by the end of the second day when my dear, weary hard working family was eating a meal outside that I had loved fixing, and we sat there in that perfect evening light with a breeze touching the outside of us while warm food and wine touched the inside - I got it - and actually felt a little proud.
My sister loves to paint, making everything fresh. My niece loves to weed and see what she accomplished. My husband loves to piddle in his barns and garden. I love to plant flowers, hang laundry, cook, organize and clean. Carrying a tray of farm glasses outside full of cold well water to the troops makes me happy, and so does chopping garlic and an hour later smelling its musk on my fingers. Just as there is a time to work and a time to rest, different people are good at different things and have different roles. I had to remind myself of my Christmas post.
And as my sister later said, she'd rather work 8 hours scraping, sanding and painting than spending one hour in the kitchen cooking.
No, I didn't bake this chocolate torte, but it sure was good. I did make the savory spaghetti from scratch. It was the perfect balance.
Ecclesiastes 3
Listen to Pete Seeger, and members of The Byrds - Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn and David Crosby talk about Pete Seeger's song "Turn, Turn, Turn" that he wrote in 1959 pretty much word for word Ecclesiastes 3. Of course Seeger added that last line to verse 8, as well as the refrain "turn, turn, turn":
-
It takes all of us to make a balanced world. But silly me I fight battles where there aren't any, usually little skirmishes inside my head and heart. I can tell someone not to compare themselves with anyone else, but I'm not as good at believing it for myself.
Prepping for Farm Wedding day right here where we live, I've watched my sister scrape, sand and paint the porch and deck four days straight. I've watched my niece weed the veggie and flower beds and paint the studio roof in the hot sun for hours on end. I've watched Don build a fence, straighten the barns and a dozen other tasks. I've watched Peter dig dirt, haul pea gravel, design a stoop for l'atelier and paint roofs. Me? I've watched myself float from laundry line to flower beds to the stove and the sink, all things I enjoy. I compare tasks, and mine come up short.
But by the end of the second day when my dear, weary hard working family was eating a meal outside that I had loved fixing, and we sat there in that perfect evening light with a breeze touching the outside of us while warm food and wine touched the inside - I got it - and actually felt a little proud.
My sister loves to paint, making everything fresh. My niece loves to weed and see what she accomplished. My husband loves to piddle in his barns and garden. I love to plant flowers, hang laundry, cook, organize and clean. Carrying a tray of farm glasses outside full of cold well water to the troops makes me happy, and so does chopping garlic and an hour later smelling its musk on my fingers. Just as there is a time to work and a time to rest, different people are good at different things and have different roles. I had to remind myself of my Christmas post.
And as my sister later said, she'd rather work 8 hours scraping, sanding and painting than spending one hour in the kitchen cooking.
No, I didn't bake this chocolate torte, but it sure was good. I did make the savory spaghetti from scratch. It was the perfect balance.
Ecclesiastes 3
1To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. . . .
. . .
13And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God. . . .
. . .
20All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
Listen to Pete Seeger, and members of The Byrds - Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn and David Crosby talk about Pete Seeger's song "Turn, Turn, Turn" that he wrote in 1959 pretty much word for word Ecclesiastes 3. Of course Seeger added that last line to verse 8, as well as the refrain "turn, turn, turn":
A time to love, a time to hate
A time of peace, I swear it's not too late!
A time of peace, I swear it's not too late!
Sunday morning
At 7 in the morning
the leaves on each plant and every tree
channel the sun.
They haul fire without effort
like bird wings soaring, gliding.
No movement,
no flame,
they burn
into air.
-
-
