HEATHER KING: MATILIJA POPPY

HOME
ABOUT
BOOKS
HOLY DESPERATION
FOOLS FOR CHRIST
ARTS & CULTURE
EVENTS & MEDIA
SPEAKING
EDITING
CONTACT

Saturday, May 31, 2014

MATILIJA POPPY

MATILIJA POPPY

The one who beholds
is never alone.
This flower
is a friend.
She leads my eyes
to golden stare
while billowed petals
set my heart to sail
in wind—
far beyond
far within.
Forever
we go
from here,
my friend.

--Rita A. Simmonds
June 28, 2011

Posted by HEATHER KING at 9:34 PM

Email This BlogThis!Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest

Labels: FRIENDSHIP, MATILIJA POPPY, RITA A. SIMMONDS

1 comment:

Anna DJune 6, 2014 at 11:17 AM
Love it!
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

I WELCOME your comments!!!

Newer Post Older Post Home

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

"LIFE IS MORE FANTASTIC THAN ANY FICTION"
--DOSTOEVSKY

"LIFE IS MORE FANTASTIC THAN ANY FICTION" <br>--DOSTOEVSKY

HEATHER KING: I'm an award-winning author, columnist, and blogger. Oh yes--and an ex-barfly Catholic convert.

Look for my weekly arts and culture column in ANGELUS, the archdiocesan newspaper of LA, and my monthly column, "Credible Witnesses," in MAGNIFICAT.

I also give talks around the country, lead retreats, and edit.

I write on subjects ranging from addiction to food, money, cancer, prayer and one really gnarly year where I was in such anguish I turned to the spirituality of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

I live as a contemplative in the city: of the world, but with an ear cocked, always, to what is beyond this world. This is very very far from the station in life I once envisioned.

But as 12th c. German theologian Meister Eckhart noted: "God is greater than God."

View my complete profile

SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL OR READER

resized photo 18d0d03f-042a-483a-9444-87996e8910c8_zpsba016acb.jpg

resized photo 55902aee-1b51-4e26-bdc8-96d478c7ddeb_zpsb64783b8.jpg

resized photo 1ee3396c-6185-4720-89d1-c62ba8915948_zps1beccb68.jpg

resized photo 69bd27c1-17c6-4c82-9e7c-52533f8a092d_zps9e83f484.jpg

THE JOURNEY HOME:
MY CONVERSION STORY

ON THE VOCATION OF WRITING

ME AND ST. THÉRÈSE

"A PORTABLE KINGDOM": WRITING OUR LIVES. NOTRE DAME LITERARY CONFERENCE KEYNOTE
LISTEN TO MY NPR "ALL THINGS CONSIDERED" STORIES

SEARCH THIS BLOG

IF THE SPIRIT MOVES, PLEASE FEEL VERY FREE TO HELP MAINTAIN THIS ONE-PERSON OPERATION...

ABOUT ME

I TRUST IN GOD

I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES!!

I'M RESTLESS, IRRITABLE, AND DISCONTENT

I'M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY

I CONFESS

MY PERSONAL COMMUNION OF SAINTS

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

“You can't be any poorer than dead."

ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

"If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter."

KENZABURO ŌE

“The writer’s job is the job of a clown, the clown who also talks about sorrow.”

GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS

"Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain."

DOROTHY DAY

"We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community."

CARYLL HOUSELANDER

"I think all teddy bears should have knitted suits."

ROBERT BRESSON

"Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen."

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

"The world will be saved by beauty."

BILL CUNNINGHAM

“I don’t work. I only know how to have fun every day…. It’s as true now as it ever was: He who seeks beauty will find it!”

JACQUES LUSSEYRAN: BLIND HERO OF THE FRENCH RESISTANCE

"The self-centered life has no place in the world of the deported. You must go beyond it, lay hold on something outside yourself."

EMILY DICKINSON

“I like a look of Agony/Because I know it’s true”

GLENN GOULD

"I've had all my life a tremendously strong sense that indeed there is a hereafter, and that the transformation of the spirit is a phenomenon which one must reckon and in light of which one must attempt to live one's life."

MARIA YUDINA

Sviatoslav Richter said of her: "One day she developed a crush on someone who didn’t return her advances. One can understand why; he must have been terrified of her. And so she challenged him to a duel."

ALBERT CAMUS

"I came to literature through worship."

RAYMOND CHANDLER

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

PIER PAOLO PASOLINI

“I have an almost ideological esthetic preference for nonprofessional actors who themselves are shreds of reality as is a landscape, a sky, the sun, a donkey passing along the road.”

PEACE PILGRIM

"There is a magic formula for resolving conflicts. It is this: Have as your objective the resolving of the conflict, not the gaining of advantage."

SIMON RODIA

“I had it in my mind to do something big—and I did.”

FRANZ WRIGHT

"Soon, soon, between one instant and the next, you will be well."
From "Nude with Handgun and Rosary."

MARIA CALLAS

"I prepare myself for rehearsals like I would for a marriage."

WERNER HERZOG

“Take a close and very long look into the eyes of a chicken…It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world."

CARLO CARRETTO

“The perfection of God is cast in a material which men almost despise, which they don’t consider worth searching for because of its simplicity, its lack of interest, because it is common to all men.”

JEAN-HENRI FABRÉ: THE HOMER OF THE INSECT WORLD

“After eighty-seven years of thought and observation, I say not merely that I believe in God—I can even say that I see him.”

DONALD EVANS

“It was vicarious traveling for me to a made-up world that I liked better than the one I was in…No catastrophes occur. There are no generals or battles or warplanes on my stamps….Sometimes I get so concentrated in these worlds I get confused. …It’s hard to get out.”

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers."

EDDIE AIKAU

“Eddie didn’t take off where everyone else took off. He took off deeper.”
Eddie's brother Clyde.

MARTA BECKET

“Society laughs at old people’s dreams. They even laugh at dreams…until they come true.”

KAZUO OHNO

"The best thing someone can say to me is that while watching my performance they began to cry.”

BETTY MacDONALD

"There's nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book."

LOUISE NEVELSON

"I feel that what people call by the word ‘scavenger’ is really a resurrection."

SVIATOSLAV RICHTER

"During one period of chronic depression, it was impossible for me to live without a plastic lobster that I took with me everywhere."

THE BROTHERS QUAY

"It's that little glint, that privileged look into a keyhole, and realizing suddenly that there's this little universe that's probably suffering and barely breathing, but it's pulsating, vibrating, with its own life. That in itself is a metaphor of the universe."

THE KING: "MAN, I REALLY LIKE VEGAS."

Jesus statue found in Elvis's bedroom at Graceland.
Photo by H. King.

BILL MONROE

"Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world."

BILL W.

"We'll make it not because we're a better people--but because we're a weaker people."

CRÈME DE LA CRÈME POSTS

MAGNIFICAT

A word today about Magnificat , which has been my constant companion for many years. Magnificat is a handy little pocket-sized monthly m...
THIS I BELIEVE: "BRANDING" IS THE ANTI-CHRIST

I came to blogging because I had so much material and I was sick of sending the pieces out one by one and waiting months to get an a...
ATTACKS ON A SMALL TOWN

ANDREI RUBLEV ICON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TRINITY, c. 1410 Long ago in Russia , there were many attacks made on a small town, and in a m...
AVOIDING BOTH THE CATHOLIC LEFT AND THE CATHOLIC RIGHT

A few weeks back, I spoke of a young man who had written me several times with the following concern: "You seem to avoid some of ...
RETREATING IN DAYTON

I am safely ensconced in my very nice room at the Marianist novitiate house at Mt. St. John's in Dayton, Ohio. Raccoons, skunks, s...
MY EDITING BUSINESS

WORD: Editing ,Straight Up I don't know why; I just love this. I figure it will attract people with senses of humor. Karl Schmidt-Ro...
PLEDGE DRIVE

“It would be a terrible calamity for the world if we eliminated the beggar. The beggar is just as important in the scheme of thing...
RON ROLHEISER ON MY BOOK SHIRT OF FLAME: A YEAR WITH ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

THE MYSTERY OF CARS AT NIGHT JUST EAST OF N. LAKE AVE, ALTADENA, CA This morning I received an email from a friend reporting tha...
THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON

Rembrandt van Rijn The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1662 Collection: The Hermitage, St. Petersburg The spiritual writer Henri Nouw...
AVOIDING "THE MEAGERNESS"

I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day. I have done...

THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA

"Behold, I am with you always,
till the end of the age"...[Mt. 28:20]

MORE FASCINATING PLACES

MY NEWEST!

RAVISHED: NOTES ON WOMANHOOD

My eyes glaze over at the phrases "culture wars," "identity politics" and "gender studies." My love letter to the Church for bringing me to full flower as a woman and as a human being.

WINNER BEST BOOK OF 2018: NAT'L ASSC. OF CATHOLIC PUBLISHERS

As St. Thérèse of Lisieux said, "All prayer arises from incompetence. Otherwise there is no need for it." Self-obsessed, easily distracted, full of petty judgments and irrational fears, I should know.