Eleven  Years  Ago  Today

a Gift that keeps on giving

i  have  put  away  childish  things

I have put away childish things

And am become a man.

Hear me now, I have put away all the fantasies,

The make-believe, the dreams—I have let them go—

And the imagined destinations

Of adolescence.

The Lone Ranger and Superman

Are no heroes to me now,

And I am hiring no new actors

For the cops-and-robbers melodrama

That may still perchance play out

In a shadowed back alley of my mind.

But as a man walking the front street

Of my own city,

As mayor, priest and professor

Of my own nationhood,

I am responsible for its events,

For the honest business,

The wholesome enterprise and education,

The practical industry and harmonious art

And the living, changing forms of worship

That infinite in purpose

Proceed within my city and my nation.

I hold all this in fealty

To the Ruler of the city that includes my city,

In devotion to the King whose nation is my nation,

And I do all, speak all, see and hear

And am the very all of all I see and do,

In name and spirit of the King.

So is my state kingly and a fitting home,

A palace and a palace garden

For the coming in and the going out

Of Him I love by His own love

And truly serve by His own truth.

I have put by the childish toys

And left the playhouse of infancy

And am become a man.

Travels

Salmon Arm Marshlands

on a clear day

and then the storm

The  Man  Watching

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after

so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes,

that a storm is coming,

and I feel the far-off fields say things

I can’t bear without a friend,

I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on

across the woods and across time,

and the world looks as if it had no age:

the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,

is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!

What fights with us is so great!

If only we would let ourselves be dominated

as things do by some immense storm,

we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,

and the triumph itself makes us small.

What is extraordinary and eternal

does not  want  to be bent by us.

I mean the Angel, who appeared

to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:

when the wrestlers sinews

grew like long metal strings,

he felt them under his fingers

like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by his Angel,

(who often simply declined the fight),

went away proud and strengthened

and great from that harsh hand,

that kneaded him as if to change his shape.

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively

By constantly greater beings.

Rainer Maria Rilke   translated by  Robert Bly

Cosmos

Ren's  new  Friend

they  came  for  a  visit

Jjanet  is  entranced

Oh Oh  ...  Anne  is  in  Love

Garden  of  the  Gods

Colorado Springs

 

 

Salmon Arm

Named Best Community In B.C.

Sixth Best Place To Live In Canada

https://www.saobserver.net/news/salmon-arm-named-best-community-in-b-c/