{"id":2510,"date":"2006-03-17T19:58:56","date_gmt":"2006-03-18T02:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/?p=2510"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:44:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:44:26","slug":"recognition-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2006\/03\/17\/recognition-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Recognition<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Playing truth or dare an hour before daylight<br \/>\namong the bean trees, I encounter a stranger at the gate.<br \/>\nWhen I ask what she is doing, she replies,<br \/>\n&#8220;Composing a life.&#8221; She seeks to answer the question,<br \/>\n&#8220;Is there no place on earth for me?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I ask how she will know the answer, and she says<br \/>\nshe will track her progress in the stone diaries.<br \/>\nShe has an amazing grace, this girl with a pearl earring<br \/>\nwearing borrowed finery, and I want to know more.<br \/>\nI ask with an open heart, open mind, what it is she seeks.<\/p>\n<p>She wants to understand the savage inequalities,<br \/>\nto have a reckoning with the fact that she lives<br \/>\nin a world where the poisonwood bible increasingly<br \/>\nbecomes the rule of law. She wants to help people<br \/>\nto stop running with scissors and enjoy the perfection<br \/>\nof the morning.<\/p>\n<p>We are surrounded by landscapes of wonder, if we<br \/>\nwould only make the effort to see differently.<\/p>\n<p>She in turn asks what I seek. I reply that I want<br \/>\nthe courage to be, to cast a slender thread<br \/>\nof hope into the sea, the sea of humanity.<br \/>\nI want to plant new seeds of contemplation,<br \/>\nembrace the grace in dying. I want to<br \/>\nknow the mystery of tying rocks to clouds.<\/p>\n<p>From her angle of repose under oleander,<br \/>\njacaranda, the magnificent spinster listens.<br \/>\nI tell her she has a beautiful mind, that<br \/>\nI can see the molecules of emotion swirling in her.<br \/>\nShe tells me that I am a succulent wild woman,<br \/>\nthat I have zen under a wing. She reminds me<br \/>\nthat art is a way of knowing and solitude<br \/>\na return to the self.<\/p>\n<p>Then we part, blessing each other with traveling<br \/>\nmercies, with a promise to meet again<br \/>\nat the healing circle in Gilead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recognition Playing truth or dare an hour before daylight among the bean trees, I encounter a stranger at the gate. When I ask what she is doing, she replies, &#8220;Composing a life.&#8221; She seeks to answer the question, &#8220;Is there no place on earth for me?&#8221; I ask how she will know the answer, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,28,215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aenigmas","category-humanities","category-poetry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10323,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions\/10323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}