Brian’s Reflection: Friday, February 22, 2008


I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!


- Edna St. Vincent Millay, poet, born on this day,
1892, in Rockville, Maine


“I am waylaid by Beauty”. For me, whatever else “God” is, It is a kind of irresistible Beauty that is at the heart of Life which has the seductive power to draw us out of our symbolic “years” of Silence. It seems to me that we human beings spend a great deal of time in the Silences. Maybe this is “normal”? We get to one “house”, and there we stay for whatever time, short or long. Life goes on, at different levels of contentment or discontent.

But Life is, I think, always a growing, a becoming. That process can be gentle or tumultuous or somewhere in between. We are always a becoming-human-being - that’s what makes Life so fascinating and that’s what makes Death so intriguing. What’s to be found when we move “from one house to another”?

I’ve lived with the frogs of dusk on and off again in different parts of the World. Especially Liberia and the Caribbean, where they are loud. They can be scary and ominous – until you know what it is making all that racket.

The “savage Beauty” of discovering Life - Self, Others, Mystery - is necessary. What or who one loves is the best companion to walk between us and the “crying of the frogs”. When another house beckons, take Love’s arm and set out.

Brian+