Thursday, May 21, 2015

hope and gossamer threads


One of my birthday presents from my daughter was a journal 
I had given her for Christmas, you know, one of those 3 journals
in a pack . I had gotten them  at the New York Public Library. The 
particular journal,The City that Never Sleeps, has a different cover 
but here is the pack:




She transformed each page into a memory journal and left room to write. Tickets to movies and musicals.... funny scenes from  Call the Midwife called The Adventures of Chummy ... favorite quotes from books...







About the same time , I read the Art House America blog: Knotted Gossamer by Nancy Nordenson.
It reminded me of Emma Timmons in Larkrise to Candleford winning the poetry contest with 
her poem about Gossamer Threads. Something went deep and I felt my soul being wooed.



[Emma Timmins reads her poem "Gossamer Threads"]
Emma Timmins: As I went on my way,/Gossamer threads spanned from bush to bush like barricades,/As I broke through one after another/I was taken by a childish fear./They are trying to bind and keep me here./But as I grew from girl to woman,I knew/The threads that bind me were more enduring than gossamer. /They were spun of kinship and love,/Given so freely that it could never be taken away from me.

Nancy wrote:
 A poem by Denise Levertov speaks of the “grey gossamer hammock” that is the Lord’s and in it, the narrator curls and swings. A hammock of flimsy web that should rip apart, but doesn’t. A hammock anchored to thin twigs that should break, but don’t. You climb in and hope it holds. I like to wonder about the nature of all this unseen support that offers not only the safety of the curl but the strength of the swing. I imagine the catch of angels; God’s infinite palm; the unknowable, immeasurable, yet nevertheless concrete woof and warp of divine will and presence. 

Then I look around. 
She continues:
 Hope is a big word, a huge word, yet I’ve been swinging it around so lightly. I hope: in e-mails, texts, and status updates. I hope: in conversations and phone calls.
I have been looking for hope and answers to prayer. I took " A City that Never Sleeps" journal and  just like my Heavenly Father who never sleeps, started looking around for the  seeing the word hope
May 12th to now = 9 pages of the word hope


1 comment:

Come Away With Me said...

So lovely. And deep. And I really enjoyed the Adventures of Chummy link too - thank you for sharing that.