Guiding light

How about a little Mumford & Sons to get you started this morning?

I meant to mention earlier that Mary Oliver, the poet, died last week. Known for her “secular psalms,” she has been dubbed by some “the unofficial poet laureate” of the Unitarian Universalist denomination. Well, then. I liked her anyway.

Song of the Builders

On a summer morning

I sat down

on a hillside

to think about God –

a worthy pastime.

Near me, I saw

a single cricket;

it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.

How great was its energy,

how humble its effort.

Let us hope

it will always be like this,

each of us going on

in our inexplicable ways

building the universe.

You can read about her here and here.

I will also note that on this day in 1848 James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento. Our great-great-great grandfather, Silas Hough, went west the following year to seek his fortune, but died of cholera just east of the Rocky Mountains.

His 16-year old son, our great-great grandfather John Simpson Hough who had accompanied him, went home to Philadelphia. He didn’t stay long though. He had seen the Rocky Mountains and there was no holding him back.

And, hey, this was an interesting interview. (I had never heard of this book. I may have to read it.)

When people talk about poverty, there are different kinds. There is a poverty of status in our country where you have all the food and water you need but you think other people are doing better all around you. You can also have a poverty of control. You feel you can’t choose how you spend your day, when to get up. We don’t talk about those kinds of poverty a lot.

Food for thought.

(The painting is Sunrise on the Mountains at the Head of Moraine Park, Near Estes Park, about 1920, by Charles Partridge Adams, CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder