Category: Poetry

Look at the chickadee

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

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

A Song for Simplicity

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Today’s poem-for-Sunday is another by Luci Shaw:

A Song for Simplicity

There are some things that should be as they are:
plain, unadorned, common, and all-complete;
things not in a clutter, not in a clump,
unmuddled and unmeddled with;
the straight, the smooth, the salt, the sour, the sweet.
For all that’s timeless, untutored, untailored, and untooled;
for innocence unschooled,
for unplowed prairies, primal snow and sod,
water unmuddied, wind unruled,
for these, thank God . . .

~Luci Shaw

The Second Giving

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God is always giving.  This insightful poem by Jessica Powers underlines the fact that God gives most to those who are needy and empty, yet bold in their cry for more.

     The Second Giving

The second giving of God is the great giving
out of the portions of the seraphim,
abundances with which the soul is laden
once it has given up all things for Him.

The second growth of God is the rich growing,
with fruits no constant gathering can remove,
the flourishing of those who by God’s mercy
have cut themselves down to the roots of love.

God seeks a heart with bold and boundless hungers
that sees itself and earth as paltry stuff;
God loves a soul that cast down all He gave it
and stands and cries that it was not enough.

Wrestling

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This Sunday’s poem is one by Luci Shaw.  There is always risk in wrestling with God.

     With Jacob

Inexorably I cry
as I wrestle
for the blessing,
thirsty, straining
for the joining
till my desert throat
runs dry.
I must risk
the shrunken sinew
and the laming of
his naming
till I find
my final quenching
in the hollow
of his thigh.

“God make us all His Jonathans.”

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I thought, over the next few days, I would share some meditations by Amy Carmichael.  Today’s focusses on those times when we can feel “hunted” and alone–or when a friend feels hunted and alone and how we can strengthen their hands.

1 Sam 23.16 And Jonathan, Saul’s son, arose, and went to David into the wood, and strengthened his hand in God.

God make us all His Jonathans.  There is a great hunter abroad in the world.  Like Saul who sought David every day, he seeks souls every day, never a day’s respite, always the hunt is on.  Although the words stand forever, “but God did not give him into his hands” [v. 14], yet sometimes souls tire of being hunted, and like David they are in a wilderness in a wood.  Then is Jonathan’s chance.  But notice what he does, he does not so comfort David that he becomes necessary to him.  “He strengthened his hand in God.”  He leaves his friend strong in God, resting in God, safe in God.  he detaches his dear David from himself and he attaches him to his “Very Present Help” [see Psalm 46.1].  Then Jonathan went to his house, and David abode in the wood–with God.

May God help us each to be Jonathans for each of the people in our lives.

The stars were brighter

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Two short Christmas poems:

Starry, Starry Night

     The stars were brighter
         than ever before.
     The night was different,
crackling with new beginnings.
     Something was happening
          in the dark, smelly stable;
Gift of God was before us.      (Anonymous)

Wee One in a Manger

A Wee One in a manger
Praise Him where He lies,
Angels singing carols,
Listening winter skies!   (Hayashi)

Carrying a baby prince

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I just sent this poem by Margaret Smith to one of my godchildren who is expecting her first child in January:

Advent

Shepherds, donkeys, comets, kings . . .
This year I ponder private things:
How Mary, innocent and poor,
Felt carrying a baby prince
Inside, until she bore
Him whimpering.  I wonder, since
This Christmas I am filled
With my firstborn to carry . . .
And when the wind is stilled
At night I think of Mary.

~Margaret D. Smith

“Your flame is touching ours”

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There is a little known Advent tradition–at least little known to me–of using an Advent log, instead of an wreath.  “It contains a candle hole for each day of Advent, plus one for the Christmas holy day itself.”  Here is a poem I came across that refers to this lovely tradition:

Prayer at the Advent log

The small lights steady
against the dark,
Your flame is touching ours.
Today is the fifth day.
It is a safe fire,
the candles still tall
above the brittle wood
of the birch, the air
damp and chill.
But the days will draw us
inexorably toward
Your celebration,
and again we’ll stand
in the crackling air,
the first days’ flames
licking the log
with their shortened lives,
the length of it
threatened by Your fire,
Your love dazzling our eyes,
and, O Christ,
Your love searing
our nakedness.
(Jean Janzen)

Always leave your heart ajar

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We all live in a “little town”, and we all have to do ordinary things–yet that is exactly where the Christ Child wants to be born.  Today’s poem for Sunday is all about that:

Housekeeper

This is my little town,
My Bethlehem,
And here, if anywhere,
My Christ Child
Will be born.

I must begin
To go about my day–
Sweep out the inn,
Get fresh hay for the manger
And be sure
To leave my heart ajar
In case there may be travelers
From afar.

        ~Elizabeth Rooney

And as Cardinal Schonborn says in his commentary on today’s Gospel: “Doing the simple things is not always simple, but it is certainly the best way to prepare for Christmas.”

“Shining, whole, and Godward-turned”

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I have many reasons to be thankful for this feast, that of the Immaculate Conception.  The first is that Christ was able to find someone who would give Him “an eager welcome”, who in no way would reject Him because of a sinful nature, who was pure love because He first loved us [her], because she received His love without hindrance.  And secondly, we can have great hope because in her we can see the promise God has for each of us.  Someday, through all the purifications and trials of this life, through our faltering yeses to Him, we shall become like her: “shining, whole, and Godward-turned.”  Someday, He will see His image clearly in us as well.   And someday we will never refuse His love for us.  O, sweet Mother, intercede for us.  We do thank Him for you.

December Eighth

 Beloved, Mother of us all,
Today we remember
That, of all earth’s millions,
You, Mary, in the womb,
Were shining, whole,
And Godward-turned.
You only, O Morning Star,
Lighted the clouds of sin and waiting.
You only, Immaculate Ark,
Glided above the depths of the primal curse;
For you were to bear safely over those waters
Emmanuel, your little Son, from whose baby hand
Streams the rainbow up which we climb to God.
You only, little white moon, are the crystal
Reflection of our Sun.
But for your whiteness, O Gate of Heaven,
We had never entered, nor seen our God.
But for your loveliness, O Mystic Rose,
We had never breathed the Rose of Sharon.
White Tower of David, Ivory Tower,
Princess whose beauty lured Love’s kiss when life began,
Mother, who died a thousand deaths for us,
We thank Him for you.
To-day, when He smiles to see His image in you, clear,
Remember us.

~Sr. St. Francis S.S.J. 
 (Robert, Cyril. Mary Immaculate: God’s Mother and Mine. New York: Marist Press, 1946.)