April Quotes and Photos

Holy Week, Poetry, and more...

Copying

Brittany Lauber

and sharing some of my favourite quotes from things I read during April as well as a few images (trying to improve my photography skills since the recent aquirement of a fancy hand-me-down camera from my photographer father).

Honestly, I spent most of April in a reading rut, so have been leaning into short form genres (short stories, poetry). A lot of these quotes are just from Bible readings or services I attended. Enjoy!

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“Though the fruit tree does not blossom and
no fruit is on the vines;
Though the produce of the olive fails
and the fields yield no food;...
yet will I rejoice in the Lord;...
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer
and makes me tread upon the heights.”
(Habakkuk 3:17-19)

“But life for her was finished. She knew that and had accepted it. Each day was an impersonation of the one before with only a slight shuffle—as though even for death there is a queue.”
—Simon van Booy, Sipsworth → didn’t finish this lovely novel but would like to at some point

“The front garden had been paved over, but cracks in the cement sometimes bled flowers she could name, as though just below the surface of this world are the ones we remember, still going on.”
—Ibid.

“The young lions roar and snatch their prey,
and *sneak* their food from God.”

—Me, butchering the reading of Psalm 104 during Bridegroom Vigil of Holy Monday, since which point I have been unable to shake the mental image of squirrels and young lions sneaking treats

“Departing from Your divine commandments, as from Jerusalem, going down to the passions of Jericho,
I was led astray by the vainglory of the cares of this life,
I fell prey to my own thieving thoughts,
they stripped me of the robe of sonship that was mine by grace.
Now I lie wounded, as one without the breath of life,
the priest approached me and saw my body but passed me by.
The Levite looked at it with loathing and walked away,
but You anointed me with oil, O Lord.
Bind up my gaping wounds with Linen O Christ our God,
and in Your compassion join me to the heavenly Choir.”
—From: Presanctified Liturgy of the Fifth Friday of Lent

“O Never-setting Sun, You are now setting in the tomb.
The earth trembles in terror, O Christ,
and the sun, in awe and protest, is eclipsed.”

“Your death is a life-producing sleep,
For You woke up the human race
from the deep and heavy sleep of sin and death.”

—Lamentations of Holy Friday, Pt 1 (my priest’s own translation)

“Do not weep, O Mother! I suffered all these things
to give freedom to Adam and Eve.”

—Lamentations, Pt 3

Aza Pace’s entire poem, “Work,” but especially these final lines:

“But no one wants to hear about all your wonder
over a cappuccino:

wonder is skittish, like cottontails
nibbling grass under the pokeweed.

No, I don’t find it every day—wonder is the work.”

“But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked man;
call the evildoer to account for his wickedness
that would not otherwise be found out.”
(Psalm 10:13-15)

Maggie Smith’s poem “How Dark the Beginning,” especially these lines:

“We talk so much of  light, please
let me speak on behalf

of  the good dark. Let us
talk more of how dark

the beginning of a day is.”