A Sunday-poem by Jessica Powers:
Suffering
All the day long I spent the hours with suffering.
I woke to find her sitting by my bed.
She stalked my footsteps while time slowed to timeless,
tortured my sight, came close in what was said.
She asked no more than that, beneath unwelcome,
I might be mindful of her grant of grace.
I still can smile, amused, when I remember
how I surprised her when I kissed her face.
A Sunday-poem from Jessica Powers:
But Not With Wine
“You are drunk, but not with wine” (Isaiah 51.21)
O god of too much giving, whence is this
inebriation that possesses me,
that the staid road now wanders all amiss
and that the wind walks much too giddily,
clutching a bush for balance, or a tree?
How then can dignity and pride endure
with such inordinate mirth upon the land,
when steps and speech are somewhat insecure
and the light heart is wholly out of hand?
If there be indecorum in my songs,
fasten the blame where rightly it belongs:
on Him who offered me too many cups
of His most potent goodness–not on me,
a peasant who, because a king was host,
drank out of courtesy.
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.
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.
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 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
A Sunday-poem from Jessica Powers:
God is a Strange Lover
God is the strangest of all lovers; His ways are past explaining.
He sets His heart on a soul; He says to Himself, “Here will I rest my love.”
But He does not woo her with flowers or jewels or words that are set to music,
no name endearing, no kindled praise His heart’s direction prove.
His jealousy is an infinite thing. He stalks the soul with sorrows;
He tramples the bloom; He blots the sun that could make her vision dim.
He robs and breaks and destroys–there is nothing at last but her own shame, her own affliction,
and then He comes and there is nothing in the vast world but Him and her love of Him.Not till the great rebellions die and her will is safe in His hands forever
does He open the door of light and His tendernesses fall,
and then for what is seen in the soul’s virgin places,
for what is heard in the heart, there is no speech at all.God is a strange lover; the story of His love is most surprising.
There is no proud queen in her cloth of gold; over and over again
there is only, deep in the soul, a poor disheveled woman weeping . . .
for us who have need of a picture and words: the Magdalen.~Jessica Powers
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
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.
This Sunday’s poem is one by Jessica Powers, written in 1948:
Advent
I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.
And on one night when a great star swings free
from its high mooring and walks down the sky
to be the dot above the Christus i,
I shall be born of her by blessed grace.
I wait in Mary-darkness, faith’s walled place,
with hope’s expectance of nativity.
I knew for long she carried me and fed me,
guarded and loved me, though I could not see.
But only now, with inward jubilee,
I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge:
someone is hidden in this dark with me.
~Jessica Powers, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, p. 81.
Witnesses to Hope 