Joyce Rupp’s Changing the Landscape

As part of my own Lenten study time this season, I have been reading My Soul Feels Lean: Poems of Loss and Restoration by Joyce Rupp.   Thank goodness for this poet of the spirit, for this singer of human psalms.  I have especially appreciated her raw and honest sense of humanity and am inspired by her sense of hope and light in the midst of darkness.

This week as snow fell and graced our little farm, I was grateful for the the peace and restoration of “snow days.”  There is something to be said for the childlike sense of excitement and gratitude that comes with having an unexpected day apart from life’s typical routines.  I found it very affirming and of no coincidence that I opened the book to this poem on such a day. ~cameron

Changing the Lanscape by Joyce Rupp

It doesn’t take much

to change the grey drabness

of a bleak winter day,

just an inch or two of snow

soft upon the lawn and roof.

It doesn’t take much

to change the stony landscape

of a rankled heart,

just a word or two of kindness

soft upon the discontent.

It doesn’t take much

to change the angry mind

of a quickened heart,

just an offering of forgiveness

soft upon the injury.