Category: Sunday poems

On Corpus Christi, Before the Blessed Sacrament

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

On Corpus Christi, Before the Blessed Sacrament

You languish in the darkness like
a criminal imprisoned
a sick man quarantined
an eccentric, babbling uncle, hid away.

Are they so afraid of You?
Are we so ashamed of You?
This is Your pageant day!

Where are Your holy calvacades?
Your solemn ranks of soldiers
with their Captain at their head?
Your festal, fair processions
winding through the curious crowds
who marvel at the sacred spectacle?

In the quiet I hear the echoes
from the stones of ancient streets
crying out with praise to shame us
for our silence.
In the blackness I see faces
of a multitude of children
looking down the ages, wondering
to see so plain a feast.

For the glory due Your name,
how long, O Lord,
must You wait?

~Paul Thigpen

“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

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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.

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

“Spun-gold”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

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.

Look at the Chickadee (Repost)

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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