Life Has Loveliness To Sell
The Vineyard Gazette arrived today, with this quote from a Sarah Teasdale Poem as its top banner:
"Life has loveliness to sell,
all beautiful and splendid things.
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up,
holding wonder like a cup."
Life hasn't been easy for a lot of us these days- we've lost livelihoods & loved ones; we are living in uncertainty, transformation & tumult. Those of us living on the island know how blessed we are to be reminded daily of life's loveliness. ( perhaps ten thousand joys to balance the ten thousand sorrows....)
I recorded a folk song version of "Life has Loveliness" many moons ago in an adaptation of a Unitarian Universalist hymn. Here is the song below, with lots of photos of Martha's Vineyard in a slide show.
The line "life has loveliness to sell" offers a sweet invitation for further reflection into the idea of selling and buying- and perhaps all that we so freely receive ...
What about you? What's on your list of life's loveliness these days?
For me, it's been fireflies, dragonflies, dahlias, trees, my daughter and her boyfriend here for a visit... the loving nurses in the emergency room who tended to her sprained foot on the night of the fourth of July; the fireworks over the lagoon my husband and I just lucked into seeing while waiting in the hospital parking lot....and this inspiring quotation, which I offer here, as the Teasdale poem says, "for the spirit's sheer delight, holy thoughts that light the night":
some place for the singing of angels,
some place for that which itself is breathless and beautiful.
~Howard Thurman