This poem was inspired from watching a recent high school lacrosse post-season match. Overcoming the odds, the victorious team fought back to win in overtime. My granddaughter played an inspiring match, and her steal and goal sealed a sudden victory.
Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.
(Both quotes come from Mitchell’s novel, Gone with the Wind)
Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) was an American novelist and journalist. Her only published novel earned the National Book Award for Fiction in 1936 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937.
Disturbing times should remind us we are only pilgrims on this earth. Our citizenship is in a heavenly kingdom that can never be shaken.
From Psalm 46:1-3: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam,though the mountains tremble with its tumult.”
Charles Stanley (1932-2023) was an American pastor and Christian writer. He was dedicated to leading a teaching ministry.
In December, 1989, the Romanian Revolution ignited with passion, which would no longer wait in silence. The rest of the Eastern Bloc countries under Soviet influence had already experienced peaceful change from communist dictatorships. Under Nicolae Ceausescu’s harsh leadership, Romania was the final holdout as the democratic wave of freedom blitzed across Eastern Europe. The city of Timisoara was the first in Romania to secure its freedom, with the rest of the country to follow. This poem shares some of this revolution’s story.
We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
When we’re connected to others, we become better people. [Both quotes come from Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” given on September 18, 2007.]
Randy Pausch (1960-2008) was an American educator and professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. His life was cut short by pancreatic cancer, but he persevered to share his final lecture a few months before his death.
When I rise up, let me rise up joyful like a bird. When I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf.
The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector.
Wendell Berry (born 1934) is an American novelist and poet. Much of his writing embraces the goodness of protecting our environment and preserving agriculture’s way of life.
Big Sky Buckeye 