Kent Ira Groff – The Spark that Liberates
In each weekly reflection you’ll find a timely quote for personal or group meditation or for public speaking along with art or a poem. Received in a weekly email. For more information, see LinkYourSpirituality.com
THE SPARK THAT LIBERATES
(But what are you liberated FOR?)
What’s the spark that ignites
the long, slow fuse of liberation?
asked the teacher. Hmmm….
A haunting line of a conversation over lunch;
The emaciated lady in last night’s dream;
Zinging lyrics in Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire;
Rippling cadences in Tchaikovsky’s
Swan Lake;
The arc in the afternoon’s double rainbow;
Plaintive eyes of the abused child on TV;
Giggles of a baby gurgling milk;
Brother Lawrence’s barren tree in winter;
A puppy’s snarl…. the cat’s meow;
The same phrase heard three times
in two days;
A half-forgotten memory when
the alarm rings;
The tone of voice from the backside
of the heart;
A lingering sting of a friend’s throwaway line;
“The treasures of darkness” in Isaiah 45;
A mystical lion in a half dozing moment;
Spontaneous wisdom of a homeless guy,
“We don’t evolve, we revolve.”
“One line drops from the ceiling,” says the poet,” and you tap all the others in around it with your jeweler’s hammer and wait suspended till that next line finds you.”*
Pay attention. Because any moment can create
the spark that lights the long, slow fuse to liberate
your own novocained soul,
your dysfunctional family system,
this half conscious nation,
this swiftly tilting planet.
But then what are you liberated FOR?
-Kent Ira Groff©
*Annie Dillard The Writing Life
SILENCE FOR REFLECTION…
Permission is granted to use; just cite the source.
(Kent Ira Groff is author of Energion Publications/Academy of Parish Clery–Conversations in Ministry title Clergy Table Talk. The list below includes some of his books from other publishers.)
