Welcome.
Let’s prepare.
Poetry retreat is loosely based on the traditional contemplative spiritual practice of Lectio Divina, specifically the third step, Oratio, which is where you speak the sacred text out loud.
Instead of speaking poetry out loud, you can choose one of 3 recorded poems to listen to.
3 simple steps for preparation
02
Grab a journal & set a timer
01
Choose a poem
Listen to the poem through twice.
03
Listen to your chosen poem
During the Retreat
Spend 10-15 minutes reflecting on the poem and what lines stood out to you.
Listen to the poem again. Spend 15 minutes journaling what came up for you. What were you drawn to?
Poem
St. Catherine of Siena
The sun hears the fields talking about effort
and the sun smiles
and whispers to me,
“Why don’t the fields just rest,
for I am willing to do
Everything to help them grow.”
Rest, my dears,
in prayer.
Life
Edith Wharton
Life, like a marble block, is given to all,
A blank, inchoate mass of years and days,
Whence one with ardent chisel swift essays
Some shape of strength or symmetry to call;
One shatters it in bits to mend a wall;
One in a craftier hand the chisel lays,
And one, to wake the mirth in Lesbia’s gaze,
Carves it apace in toys fantastical.
But least is he who, with enchanted eyes
Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be,
Muses which god he shall immortalize
In the proud Parian’s perpetuity,
Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies
That the night cometh wherein none shall see.
The Guest House
Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
God’s Grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.