Hints and Guesses
A conversation at lunch today about fortunate and unfortunate circumstances, about children and family and the frailty of aging parents…has left me tender — and in awe — at the mystery of what it means to be alive. So I turn once again, to poetry.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observation, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is
Incarnation.
— from Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot