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
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.
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 moreBreaking 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
The poem for this Sunday is a wonderful introduction to Lent.
Defect
The flaw is no more
noticeable, even to me,
than a new moth-hole
in my sweater, or
a very bald spot
on the fabric of
my velvet vest.Yet when
I hold the cloth
up to the window
the sunlight
bleeds through.~Luci Shaw
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”.
A Sunday-poem by Amy Carmichael:
Spun-gold
We cannot bring Thee praise like golden noon-light
Shining on earth's green floor;
Our song is more like silver of the moon-light,
But we adore.
We cannot bring Thee, O Belovèd, ever,
Pure song of woodland bird;
And yet we know the song of Thy least lover
In love is heard.
O blessèd be the love that nothing spurneth;
We sing, Love doth enfold
Our little song in love; our silver turneth
To fine spun-gold.
A repost from a year ago. (I still love this poem!)
A beautiful snow last night and this morning a bird singing outside my window. This brings to mind a poem by Jessica Powers about a chickadee in a snow storm. There is always something to be learned from God’s creatures if we just take the time to look and ask Him to help us to really see.
Look at the Chickadee
I take my lesson from the chickadee
who in the storm
receives a special fire to keep him warm,
who in the dearth of a December day
can make the seed of a dead weed his stay,
so simple and so small,
and yet the hardiest hunter of them all.The world is winter now and I who go
loving no venture half so much as snow,
in this white blinding desert have been sent
a most concise and charming argument.
To those who seek to flout austerity,
who have a doubt of God’s solicitude
for even the most trivial of His brood,
to those whose minds are chilled with misery
I have this brief audacious word to say:
look at the chickadee,
that small perennial singer of the earth,
who makes the week of a December day
the pivot of his mirth.~Jessica Powers
Today’s poem comes from Amy Carmichael:
Love, travelling in the greatness of His strength, Found me alone, Footsore and tired by the journey's length, Though I had known All the long way many a kindly air, And flowers had blossomed for me everywhere. And yet Love found me needing Him. He stayed; Love stayed by me. "Let not your heart be troubled or dismayed, My child," said He. Slipped from me then, all troubles, all alarms, For Love had gathered me into His arms.
I post a poem every Sunday mostly for myself. I love poetry–and always have–and I’m hoping someone out there does as well. One of the reasons I love poetry is because it forces us more to the edges of heaven, to open our minds to the beauty and goodness and truth of God.
Small Song
God of the sky,
God of the sea,
God of the rock
and bird and tree,
you are also
the God of me.The pebble fell.
The water stirred
and stilled again.
The hidden bird
made song for you.
His praise is heard.You heard him sing
from in the tree.
And searching still
I know you’ll see
The love that wings
to you from me.~Luci Shaw
A well-loved and wonderful poem:
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced-fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change.
Praise him.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins
Witnesses to Hope 