i thank You God for most this amazing day

Hello, September!  Glad to be back in this space and for these three gifts this morning:

First, e.e.cummings' poetry was perhaps my real entry into falling in love with poems.  Today, I am reminded of that first love with this poem.  (go here to hear cummings read his poem).

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings; and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any - lifted from the no
of all nothing - human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Second, this stunning choral arrangement of cummings' words.



Finally, my ever-present comfort found in the words of Frederick Buechner's Listening to Your Life:

Today.  It is a moment of light surrounded on all sides by darkness and oblivion.  In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another just like it and there will never be another just like it again.  It is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth.  It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death.  If you were aware of how precious it is, you could hardly live through it.  Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all.

"This is the day which the Lord has made," says the 118th Psalm.  "Let us rejoice and be glad in it."  Or weep and be sad in it for that matter.  The point is to see it for what it is because it will be gone before you know it.  If you waste it, it is your life that you're wasting.  If you look the other way, it may be the moment you've been waiting for always that you're missing.

All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not yet emerged from them.  Today is the only day there is.

I am thankful for these daily things.