Category: Sunday poems

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

This is a powerful Easter poem by Luci Shaw.  I know it’s not the Easter season, but I think it’s at times like these–as we’re moving into the physically darker seasons of fall and winter, and sometimes simultaneously darker emotional seasons for some of us–that we need to remember that we are always an Easter people.      

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             John 20:19, 26

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

The Appearance of Christ at the Cenacle
The Appearance of Christ at the Cenacle (James Tissot)

Loving Love and Beauty seeing

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

A beautiful poem on beauty by one of our sisters, Sr. Stacy Whitfield:

                       Beauty

I love your wild extravagance,
          mountain flower and autumn leaves
Endowed with lovely lavishness,
          making much of what none sees.

Yet surely you would not adorn
          with greater glory grassy hills
Than sons and daughters made for joy
           and destined for more beauty still.

Oh give me hope to lift my soul
           to beauties that yet lie unseen,
That wait beyond the shimm’ring veil,
           awaiting Dawn’s eternity.

The wondrous views of heaven’s scope
           from which earth’s grand reflection springs,
The beauty that is fairer still
           than all your earthly artistry.

Oh give me faith and love to long
           to see all beauty’s heavenly source,
From which all loveliness is flowing,
           river-like upon its course.

The fullness of all beauty there
          on which to gaze to soul’s delight,
A heart all pure, a form all fair,
          the fountainhead of love, of light.

I shall abide in blissful rest,
          loving Love and Beauty seeing,
Taking in your loveliness
          with opened eyes, with transformed being.

                                          ©Sr. Stacy Whitfield (revised February 3, 1991)

Reluctant prophet

Luci Shaw’s poem, “Reluctant Prophet.”

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Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Continuing in my share-a-poem-with-you-on-Sunday tradition, here’s another one by Luci Shaw:

Reluctant Prophet

Both were dwellers
in deep places
(one in the dark
bowels of ships
and great fish
and wounded pride.
The other–
in the silvery belly
of the seas).

Both heard God saying
“Go!”
but the whale
did as he was told.