A Quote by James Weldon Johnson

O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? — © James Weldon Johnson
O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
Lips move; lips touch; lips signal. Lips are on the outside for show, and on the most secret inside of your mouth. Lips frame words that lie. Lips frame a hole that wants to be filled.
I purified my lips with sacred fire that I might speak of love, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I found myself mute.
O naked flower of my lips, you lie! I await a thing unknown or perhaps, unaware of the mystery and your cries you give, O lips, the supreme tortured moans of a childhood groping among its reveries to sort out finally its cold precious stones.
I ache for the touch of your lips dear, but much more for the touch of your whips dear.
Dreams, memories, the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.
In the orchard and rose garden I long to see your face. In the taste of Sweetness I long to kiss your lips. In the shadows of passion I long for your love.
Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards.
Like sheaves of corn it gathers you unto itself. It threshes you to make you naked. It sifts you to free you from your husks. It grinds you to whiteness. It kneads you until you are pliant. And then it assigns you to its sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's Heart.
I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend. The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body. I want to know where to touch you, I want to know how to touch you. I want to know convince you to design a smile just for me. Yes, I do want to be your friend. I want to be your best friend in the entire world.
I realized a long time ago, with a certain amazement, that no mattter how important something is in your life, no matter how huge it is, how much space it takes up in your heart and in your thoughts, unless you mention it to other people, they have no idea it exists.
Choose a single, sacred word or phrase that captures something of the flavor of your intimate relationship with God. A word such as Jesus, Abba, Peace, God or a phrase such as "Abba, I belong to you." . . . Without moving your lips, repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly, and often.
Civilization did not come with fire. It came with the discovery of how to use fire to heat water.
When you rest deeply in the Unknown without trying to escape, your experience becomes very vast. As the experience of the Unknown deepens, your boundaries begin to dissolve. You realize, not just intellectually but on a deep level, that you have no idea who or what you are. A few minutes ago, you knew who you were-you had a history and a personality-but from this place of not knowing, you question all of that.
Between lips and lips there are cities of great ash and moist summit, drops of when and how, vague comings and goings: between lips and lips as along a shore of sand and glass the wind passes.
She stretched out her hand, saying, “Vernon! My dear, what a delightful surprise!” “What’s surprising about it?” he enquired, lifting his black brows. “Didn’t you ask me to come?” The smile remained pinned to Lady Buxted’s lips, but she replied with more than a touch of acidity: “To be sure I did, but so many days ago that I supposed you had gone out of town!” “Oh, no!” he said, returning her smile with one of great sweetness.
O love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
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