Category: Poetry

Power made perfect in infirmity

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

What is a more powerful expression of the power of the Holy Spirit than His work in our personal lives, especially in our areas of weakness?  This Sunday’s poem is by Mother Mary Francis about that very thing.

A Scriptural Commentary

“For power is made perfect in infirmity” (2 Corinthians 12.9)

Predictable Your power, God,
Who shake the heavens into thunderous roar
And split the skies with lightning at Your glance.

You gaze at oceans and they leap
To speak response in crash of waves
And then subside in wonder at Your feet.

Only to think on seed need You
To see a thousand forests rise to praise You,
Hear treble of small blossoms find their voice.

Wave of Your raised almighty hand’s
Enough to call the sun to rise or set,
To light the sky-dome with ten million stars.

Never will skies impediment Your power
Nor oceans strain Your energies, nor earth
Challenge Your might, stand stubborn before Your gaze.

I do applaud Your power, God.
How effortless Your cosmic sovereignty!
Your easy might is something to admire.

Power is wondrous for no need
Of labor, power issued without threat.
But shall unthreatened power be best praise

Of You, O God? Could greater be
Praise of Your laboring omnipotence
To bend a stubborn heart, to tame a will?

I weep to see You strain to win
So small a prize, tense to achieve
Your purpose, and with all the odds against You.

O God, dear God, what wondrous might
Is Yours displayed in me!
Your power made perfect in my infirmity!

Envoi:  Take, God, the scope I bring You
For play of power. See!
And my own power found at last
In my infirmity.

May 20: Very Early Morning

Sr. Dorcee, beloved5 Comments

It’s Sunday and time for me to share a poem.  I love this poem by Luci Shaw.  I think it’s one of the first I ever read of hers and always comes back to mind this time of year.   I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  I think it’s one that benefits greatly from being read aloud.  (There are shades of Hopkins in this poem.)

May 20: Very Early Morning

All the field praises him/all
dandelions are his glory/gold
and silver all trilliums unfold
white flames above their trinities
of leaves all wild strawberries
and massed wood violets   reflect his skies–
clean blue and white
all brambles/all oxeyes
all stalks and stems lift to this light
all young windflower bells
tremble on hair
springs for his air’s
carillon touch/last year’s yarrow (raising
brittle star skeletons) tells
age is not past praising
all small low unknown
unnamed weeds show his impossible greens
all grasses sing
tone on clear tone
all mosses spread a spring–
soft velvet for his feet
and by all means
all leaves/buds/all flowers cup
jewels of fire and ice
holding up
to his kind morning heat
a silver sacrifice

now
make of our hearts a field
to raise your praise

~Luci Shaw

“. . . for they shall see God”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

It’s still the time, the season, of remembering Christ’s appearances to those He loved.  Let us not move too quickly back into ordinary time.  (Is there ever an “ordinary” time with Christ in our lives?)  Luci Shaw captures this need to learn to recognized Him in this Sunday-poem.  We, too, need to “get beyond the way he looks” in our everyday lives:

He who has seen Me has seen the Father (James Tissot)

“. . . for they shall see God”

Matthew 5.8

Christ risen was rarely
recognized by sight.
They had to get beyond the way he looked.
Evidence strong than his voice and face and footstep
waited to grow in them, to guide
their groping from despair,
their stretching beyond belief.

We are as blind as they
until the opening of our deeper eyes
shows us the hands that bless
and break our bread,
until we finger
wounds that tell our healing,
or witness a miracle of fish
dawn-caught after our long night
of empty nets.  Handling
his Word, we feel his flesh,
his bones, and hear his voice
calling our early-morning name.

~Luci Shaw

“He was one of us, no stranger . . .”

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

The poem for this Sunday describes the experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus:

Companion

When first He joined us, coming, it seemed from nowhere,
and yet, somehow, as if he had followed us a long, long time,
immediately, He was one of us, no stranger, but
a close companion, speaking softly, familiar with our lives,
these days, the answers to our doubts.

And when we moved Him to at least partake of food,
he stood there at the table, not as guest, but host,
and broke the bread to portions, one for each,
then poured the wine, His dark-marked hands
blessing the wine and us.  Was it that act,

His broken hands raised up against the wooden walls,
the prayer-bowed head, the gently spoken word
or some reflection trembling in the wine,
a thickening of air, a luminosity not of wavering light,
that pierced our hearts with joy,

that filled our mouths with praise?  O praise!
O joy!  Then suddenly the light withdrawn,
no longer form and lifted hands above the bread.
Stumbling, we found the road to town,
knowing that never, never would we walk alone again.

~Marie J. Post (all rights reserved)

All the doors being shut

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

A Sunday-poem along yesterday’s lines:

Open

Doubt padlocked one door and
Memory put her back to the other.
Still the damp draught seeped in, though
Fear chinked all the cracks and
Blindness boarded up the window.
In the darkness that was left
Defeat crouched, shivering,
In his cold corner.

Then Jesus came
(all the doors being shut)
and stood among them.

~Luci Shaw

A golden moment

Sr. Dorcee, beloved6 Comments

There are so many artistic depictions of the Annunciation, but one of my all-time favorites is one that a good friend of mine gave me a few years ago.  You can see it below.  Not too long afterward I came across a poem by Luci Shaw that seemed to have been written for it.  I share that with you as well.  Thank you, Mary, for your earth-changing yes. . .

Annunciation (golden) 001Virgin

As if until that moment
nothing real
had happened since Creation

As if outside the world were empty
so that she and he were all
there was–he mover, she moved upon

As if her submission were the most
dynamic of all works; as if
no one had ever said Yes like that

As if that day the sun had no place
in all the universe to pour its gold
but her small room

(Luci Shaw)

Royalty

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Today’s Sunday-poem is by Luci Shaw:

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.

Moses Reclothed

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

This Sunday’s poem is by Luci Shaw:

Moses Reclothed

Bare-soled he waits,
bowed bare-headed, stripped to the heart,
eyes narrowing, hands to his face
against the heat,
watching.

Hissing, the dust-dry leaves
and cobwebs shrivel
baring the curved thorns
woven with gold,
and the black-elbowed branches
wrapped in a web of flame.

Wondering, he waits
in the hot shadow of the smoking voice–
observes no quivering flake of ash
blown down-draft from the holy blaze,
no embers glowing on the ground.
Flinching, himself, before the blast
he sees the unshrinking thorny stems
alive, seared but still strong,
uncharred, piercing the fire.

Enveloped now in burning, ardent speech
he feels the hot sparks touching his
tinder soul, to turn him into flame.

and Angels danced

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

A wonderful poem about the joy of the angels when any of us repents of our sin:

Choreography for Angels

I say to you, that there is joy among the angels in heaven upon one sinner doing penance . . . (Luke 15.10)

Who spun these Angels into dance
When wars are needing artillery
Of spirits’ cannonading.  Armistice
Wants first the over-powering wings, and they
Are occupied with pirouettes!  Who did this?

Gone penitent, I caused it.  I confess it.

Who tilted flames of Seraphim
In arabesques of pure delightedness?
Is not the cosmic crisis begging fire
For full destruction of hate’s hazarding?
Why Seraphs swirling flames on floors of heaven?

I lit the heavens, when I bent my head.

Who lined mystic corps-de-ballet
Of Cherubim?  Who set in pas-de-deux
This Power with this Principality?
Why these Archangels not on mission sent
Today, but waltzing on stars, and singing?

I am the one who did this.  I confess it.
I smote my errant heart, and Angels danced.

~Mother Mary Francis (Summon Spirit’s Cry)

Arise, belovèd, come

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A very good and dear friend died very unexpectedly from cardiac arrest yesterday. . . .  This song we sing keeps going over and over in my mind:

“Arise, belovèd, come,
For spring adorns the land;
The vine in flower will bear sweet fruit;
Arise, and take my hand.”

The voice of Christ impelled
Her heart to rise and go
To hidden places carved in rock
That only lovers know.

“Arise, beloved, come,
and let me see your face,
and I will be your summer sun,
and you my dwelling place.”

She lived in faithful prayer,
The Sun her constant flame
Through autumn gold and winter snow,
Until he called her name:

“Arise, belovèd, come,
For summer walks the land.
The vine in flower has borne its fruit,
The harvest is at hand.”

~Genevieve Glen, OSB