"Hafiz,
Awake awhile.
Just one True moment of Love
Will last for days."
— Hafiz from "Awake Awhile," rendered by Daniel Ladinsky in Ten Poems To Open Your Heart by Roger Housden
"Spring flowers
preach the gospel:
we who have died
are alive today.
We who risked winter
now raise our heads high
to the glorious sun.
"Delicate petals,
daughters of resilience,
they call to me,
encouraging the heart
of true believing."
— Joyce Rupp from "Reflection of Spring Alive in Us" in Rest Your Dreams On A Little Twig
"More and more I have come to admire resilience
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
It turns to another. A blind intelligence, true.
But our of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs—al this resinous, unretractable Earth."
— Jane Hirshfield from "Optimism" in Given Sugar, Given Salt
Words and Images that Seep into the Soul by James Phillips Noble is a devotional and creative expression of the author's Christian faith. It addresses subjects like providence, adversities, challenges, character, history, and social change that are germane to resilience. Here is an excerpt on grace that speaks of how the human spirit gets nourished even amid troubles.
