2
" The Child Christ lives on from generation to generation in the poets, very often the frailest of men but men whose frailty is redeemed by a child's unworldliness, by a child's delight in loveliness, by the spirit of wonder.
Christ was a poet, and all through His life the Child remains perfect in Him. It was the poet, the unworldly poet, who was King of the invisible kingdom; the priests and rulers could not understand that. The poets understand it, and they, too, are kings of the invisible kingdom, vassal kings of the Lord of Love, and their crowns are crowns of thorns indeed. "
― Caryll Houselander , The Reed of God
5
" In the world as it is, torn with agonies and dissensions, we need some direction for our souls which is never away from us; which, without enslaving us or narrowing our vision, enters into every detail of our life. Everyone longs for some such inward rule, a universal rule as big as the immeasurable law of love, yet as little as the narrowness of our daily routine. It must be so truly part of us all that it makes us all one, and yet to each one the secret of his own life with God.
To this need, the imitation of Our Lady is the answer; in contemplating her we find intimacy with God, the law which is the lovely yoke of the one irresistible love. "
― Caryll Houselander , The Reed of God
12
" Soeur Marie Emelie"
Soeur Marie Emelie
is little and very old:
her eyes are onyx,
and her cheeks vermilion,
her apron wide and kind
and cobalt blue.
She comforts
generations and generations
of children,
who are
"new"
at the convent school.
When they are eight,
they are already up to her shoulder,
they grow up and go into the world,
she remains,
forever,
always incredibly old,
but incredibly never older...
She has an affinity with the hens,
When a hen dies,she sits down on a bench and cries,
she is the only grown-up, whose tears
are not frightening tears.
Children can weep without shame,
at her side...
Soeur Marie Emelie...
her apron as wide and kind
as skies on a summer day
and as clean and blue. "
― Caryll Houselander ,
13
" God abides in men"
"God abides in men,
These are men who are simple,
they are fields of corn...
Such men have minds
like wide grey skies,
they have the grandeur
that the fools call emptiness.
God abides in men.
Some men are not simple,
they live in cities
among the teeming buildings,
wrestling with forces
as strong as the sun and the rain.
Often they must forgo dream upon dream...
Christ walks in the wilderness
in such lives.
God abides in men,
because Christ has put on
the nature of man, like a garment, and worn it to his own shape.
He has put on everyone's life...
to the workman's clothes to the King's red robes,
to the snowy loveliness of the wedding garment...
Christ has put on Man's nature,
and given him back his humanness...
God abides in man. "
― Caryll Houselander ,
20
" Working, eating, sleeping, she was forming His body from hers. His flesh and blood. From her humanity she gave Him His humanity. Walking in the streets of Nazareth to do her shopping, to visit her friends, she set His feet on the path of Jerusalem. Washing, weaving, kneading, sweeping, her hands prepared His hands for the nails. Every beat of her heart gave Him His heart to love with, His heart to be broken by love. All her experience of the world about her was gathered to Christ growing in her. "
― Caryll Houselander , The Reed of God
