Both Becky and Melanie brought the 3rd Annual Blog Poetry Reading to my attention this year, and I wanted to participate, but this time in this blog space, rather than Knitnana. I've been reading Plain Living: A Quaker Path To Simplicity by Catherine Whitmire and this poem appears in the chapter on Community. On further exploration I discovered quite a bit about the author (a contemporary of Jane Addams) that I was unaware of, as well as the full quote. It's always been one of my favorites:
Let us be patient with one another,
And even patient with ourselves.
We have a long, long way to go.
So let us hasten along the road,
The road of human tenderness and generosity.
Groping, we may find one another's hands in the dark.
.....Emily Greene Balch, 1955
I think it's an appropriate meditation for today, as well.
4 comments:
Oh, so appropriate, and so wise! Thank you for posting this!
very appropriate:)
thank you
Lovely! It speaks to my quaker ancestry. :)
Hmmm, a Quaker citation...
Unlike your previous commentator, I do not have Quaker ancestry (unless you count an ancestor way back on my father's side of the family, who was apparently buried in the same cemetery as members of the family of Rufus Jones, and perhaps even Rufus Jones himself--I haven't checked). I am what Quakers call a "convinced" Friend, meaning that I joined a Quaker Meeting on my own. I do not have a copy of the book in question, nor does the library of the Meeting I attend most of the time. I will suggest that the library committee look into acquiring it. It looks like a title we should have.
The above is the first paragraph of my comment. It is written at least in part for the benefit of your fellow bloggers, who haven't the slightest idea that the person who wrote it is one of your cousins. Of course, you know full well that I don't have Quaker ancestry on my mother's side of the family, although you may not know that tidbit about my father's!
In one of your other recent posts you appended a link to a Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz. Just for larks I decided to see where I ended up, and the ranking was quite similar. This may not surprise the blogosphere, which is probably filled with people who have relatives whose views are similar to their own, but such a degree of concord of political beliefs is not that common in our family. I am awaiting my absentee ballot from Vermont so that I can vote. (The Vermont primary is on March 4.) I can only hope that the person at the top of my list will do well on Super Tuesday, i.e., today.
With love from your cousin Kristin
(and two rescued cats from area humane societies, who are sticking their noses in just so your on-line friends know that we really are related)
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