Category: Poetry

“I have loved thee”

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

I have been thinking about starting a kind of series for you all: some musings on prayer, some thoughts, some gleanings, probably in random order.  I pulled an article out of my files this morning by Jessica Powers, OCD, entitled “Who Hath First Loved Us.”  Those five words are the key and the basis for prayer.  Prayer is nothing but a response to Him “who hath first loved us.”  And so we must start by steeping ourselves in His love, by consciously opening ourselves up to His love, by paying attention to that desire at the core of our being for His love.  For that desire is, in and of itself, a response to His love touching our lives.  “Quest is the condition of the wayfarer, of the lover.  The mind points out the search, and the heart goes seeking; it reaches out toward the lovable known.  This is the fundamental attitude of the Christian.”

The condition of search . . . presupposes another condition that the words of the Mystical Doctor [St. John of the Cross] always imply.  It is the condition of being sought.  God is there in the shadows; He has been seeking the soul, inviting it, calling it to Himself with the cry of infinite and incomprehensible love.  He says to ever soul: “I have loved thee by name; thou art Mine.”  And this is no sudden movement on the part of God!  It is a search that had no beginning.  “I have loved thee,” He says, “with an everlasting love.”

Just sit with that last sentence for a minute . . . a long minute . . . and let it speak deeply to your heart.  That is prayer.

“Our Lady of the Ascension”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A singular poem about what it was like for our Lady after the Ascension.  How could she stand this separation?

Our Lady of the Assumption

Fold your love like hands around the moment.
Keep it for conference with your heart, that exit
Caught on clocks, by dutiful scribes recorded
Less truly than in archives of yor soul.

Turn back from His going, be His still-remaining.
Lift the familiar latch on cottage door . . .
Discover His voice in corners, hear His footfalls
Run down the porches of your thoughts.  No powers

However hoarse with joy, no Dominations
Curved with adoration guess what whispers
Of “Mother, look!” and “Mother, hurry!”
Glance off the cottage walls in shafts of glory.

How shall your heart keep swinging longer, Mary?
Quickly, quickly, take the sturdy needle
Before your soul crowds through your flesh!  the needle
And stout black thread will save you.  Take the sandal

Peter left for mending.  After that,
The time is short, with bread to bake for John.

Mother Mary Francis

Be still and see that I am God

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

A Sunday-poem from Mother Mary Francis:

"Be Still, and See That I Am God"
            (Psalm 46:10)

Grief went to serve sub-poena upon God:
Come to the witness stand.  Defend Yourself
From accusation that You've sudden grown
Inadequate to parenting Your world
Or me or all whomevers.
                         Where went Abba?

Has no one seen Him?  Shrill cacophony
Demands Him.  But He's nowhere to be seen.

Down cosmic boulevards loud seekers sought Him,
At impotent Omnipotence raised cries.
How lapsed skills managerial?  Why is
Desk of Divinity left unpresided

While worlds and hearts keep shouting:
                         Where went Abba?

With hounds of noise they hunt Him, turn their beams
To show Him. But He's nowhere to be seen. 

Out of loud forum blast the cries for Him
To show His face, exhibit as of old
Ability to order hearts and planets.
That chorus drafts my membership, save I
Venture such cavern as admits no sound,
Enter alone the cave where breathes my being
Contingent wholly on His own and risk
Faith's total silence.
                      But then, You had foretold it!
In stillness I have seen that You are God.

Trauma Unit

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Trauma Unit

It was never meant
to burst from the body
so fiercely, to pour unchanneled
from the five wounds
and the unbandaged brow,
drowning the dark wood,
staining the stones
and the gravel below,
clotting in the air
dark with God’s absence.

It was created for
a closed system–the unbroken
rhythms of human blood
binding the body of God,
circulating hot, brilliant,
saline, without interruption
between heart, lungs,
and all cells.

But because he was once
emptied, I am each day refilled;
my spirit-arteries
pulse with the vital red
of love; poured out,
it is his life
that now pumps through
my own heart’s core.  He bled and died
and I have been transfused.

~Luci Shaw

weep and wait

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

As we approach Holy Week, here is a Sunday-poem by Luci Shaw that will, hopefully, prod us all to never let anything we do keep us from running to Him for mercy–and she is full aware that this often seems the harder path to take:

Judas, Peter

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves
but if we find grace
to weep and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break our hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me

Royalty

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Royalty

He was a plain man
and learned no latin.

Having left all gold behind
he dealt out peace
to all us wild ones
and the weather.

He ate fish, bread,
country wine and God’s will.

Dust sandaled his feet.

He wore purple only once
and that was an irony.

~Luci Shaw

“Night is not dark where she shines bright”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

That line, taken from the line of a song about Mary, reminds me of a poem by Jessica Powers that Iwould like to share with you this Sunday:

And in her morning

The Virgin Mary cannot enter into
my soul for an indwelling.  God alone
has sealed this land as secretly His own;
but being mother and implored, she comes
to stand along my eastern sky and be
a drift of sunrise over God and me.

God is a light and genitor of light.
Yet for our weakness and our punishment
He hides Himself in midnights that prevent
all save the least awarenesses of Him.
We strain with dimmed eyes inward and perceive
no stir of what we clamored to believe.
Yet I say: God (if one may jest with God),
Your hiding has not reckoned with our Lady
who holds my east horizon and whose glow
lights up my inner landscape, high and low.
All my soul’s acres shine and shine with her!
You are discovered, God; awake, rise
out of the dark of Your Divine surprise!
You own reflection has revealed Your place,
for she is utter light by Your own grace.
And in her light I find You hid within me,
and in her morning I can see Your Face.

Rescue

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Many times God rescues us in ways different than perhaps we would like.  “My ways are not your ways . . .”

Rescue

I prayed for a lifting out of distress,
A setting down on the shore
With sweet warm sand beneath my feet
And storm-slashed waves no more

Breaking upon me.  A ripe fig tree
For dreaming under perhaps
And over me draped a cloud-fluffed sky
With sunlight around me wrapped.

Sweet Jesu, pray save me from all things dark
And rescue me from distress!

But You only gave me a raft to ride
With You the waves of distress.

Mother Mary Francis

Love letters from God

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

An interesting twist on “love letters” from God in this piece by Jessica Powers from today’s Magnificat:

Sometimes lovely things that are lost.  Beautiful things God scatters everywhere.  As Walt Whitman said, (in other words), that God is tossing down love letters in the street and everywhere, if only we would watch out for them.  I think I have come to see that even the contradictions and the crosses of life are his “love letters.”

I’ve begun to look for them [God’s love letters] with a certain joy–signs that tell me that Jesus is near.  The unexpected delay, the negative response, the inopportune caller, the gimmick that won’t work, the nice food that got overcooked, the lack of something needed, the ballpoint pen that smudges, the mistake one can’t undo–the list is endless.  Not (I hope) that I concentrate on the unpleasant things, but that they are little signs that I share in the life of Jesus.

Doesn’t this remind you of this one from Mother Teresa:

One day I met a lady who was dying of cancer in a most terrible condition. And I told her, I say, “You know, this terrible pain is only the kiss of Jesus — a sign that you have come so close to Jesus on the cross that he can kiss you.” And she joined her hands together and said, “Mother Teresa, please tell Jesus to stop kissing me”.