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Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Are We Ready? It’s Almost Here!
BirthingBy Mark UnbehagenHow does one birth peace. . .in a world that seems to prefer the profits of war?How can one birth hope. . .in a time when devastation is born of poverty and pandemic?How does one birth love. . .in a world whose heart is captive to fear?How can one birth joy. . .How can one birth joy?The plastic manger scene on the front lawnjust doesn’t do it!Birthing is so much more!It is, and requires. . .radical intimacy,prolonged patience,the coming together of pain and ecstasy,the joining of our deepest hopes and fears.Face it,birthing is a messy business.And yet this process occurs every moment of our lives:as our bodies birth cell upon cell,as our minds birth ideas and dreams into the world,as our spirits birth. . .in the midst of labor and pain. . .as our spirits birth.. JOY
From the Education for Justice website.
The Ledge of Light
The Ledge of Lightby Jessica PowersI have climbed up out of a narrow darknesson to a ledge of light.I am of God; I was not made for night.Here there is room to lift my arms and sing.Oh, God is vast! With Him all space can cometo hole or corner or cubiculum.Though once I prayed, “O closed Hand holding me…”I know Love, not a vise. I see aright,set free in morning on this ledge of light.Yet not all truth I see. Since I am notyet one of God’s partakers,I visualize Him now: a thousand acres.God is a thousand acres to me nowof high sweet-smelling April and the flowof windy light across a wide plateau.Ah, but when love grows unitive I knowjoy will upsoar, my heart sing, far more free,
having come home to God’s infinity.
Source: “The Ledge of Light” from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert F. Morneau. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1989. Found on the Education for Justice website.
Presence
Presenceby Stephen LeakeAcross the dark, a robin learns the Winter.A candle dissolves; frank and sensuousAgainst the extending light.The streets remain illegible with snow.I travel through you; uncurlingWhere weather decorates the nightAnd naves of Christmas pinesGrasp human shadows.Alone I go, echoing carolsIn powdered places. Echoes that are glorified.Prolonged.Until I find you on the benchPressed with our pasts.A child again. Tricked and traced byMemory’s gift. Lasting. Imprinted.A proof of the year’s new world.Source: http://www.christmas-time.com/presence.htm – found on the Education for Justice website.
May Christmas Come
Can I if she moved to this side of the border . . . without documentation?
Even though the wages she gets for picking coffee for us to drink is not enough to feed her family?
May Christmas Comeby Alan JonesThe rough beast slouchingtoward Bethlehem,still waits to come to term.Christmas comes and goesas we expect.Nothing changes.This year in New York, Jerusalemand Kabul,the Innocents are slaughteredaccording to Herod’s schedule.His rage, unchecked,still does its work.Yet this yearthings could be different.September 11th adds urgencyto thebirth,making this the time of choosing.The choice is oursto miss the point orsee Mary and her childin every mother and her baby,and adore, absorbingthe rage and terrorand with a loving heartrebuild the world,making peace our gift.May Christmas come.Source: http://www.thewitness.org/agw/jones.121901.html (11/5/07) – found on The Education for Justice website.
The Second Coming
This poem by Yeats is very dark indeed. Yeats lived from 1865 to 1939 – some of those days must have seemed apocalyptic to many. In spite of the problems in our world, though, we continue to live in hope. Advent is the time of looking for that hope, and the symbol is the birth of a tiny and vulnerable child. And so I repeat the use of an image that I created months ago and posted here on March 7th, during Lent. And try as I might, I can’t find amongst my photos anything that captures the sense of the Yeats’ poem better than this.
The Second Comingby William Butler YeatsTurning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;Surely the Second Coming is at hand:The Second Coming! Hardly are those words outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desertA shape with lion body and the head of a man,A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,Is moving its slow thighs, while all about itReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleepWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Source:The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, W.B. Yeats. New York: Simon &Schuster, 1996 – found on the Education for Justice website.
The Christmas Tapestry
Do you remember the song “Silent Night – 7 O’clock News” by Simon and Garfunkel?
The Christmas TapestryBy Michael Hare DukeThe humdrum duties of the land,feeding the beasts, mucking out the strawprovide the dull hessian backgroundof the Christmas scene.Suddenly the tapestry is litby glory’s goldand smirched by red threads of violence.First the angel songcaroling the Word made flesh,then the murderous fire of Herod’s fear
slaying the InnocentsIs conflict part of the perennial patternof our response to Love’s story?Colonial might, conversionproceeding from the barrel of a gunbetray the gracious Christ;the fear of might and moneybreed Terror.Innocents of Palestine,Arab and Jewbleed from the bombs and gunsthat violence deploys;the flash of gunfirerapes the night’s tranquility over Baghdad;the mothers of Breslan weep for their childrenand will not be comforted.Meanwhile there’s far within;as each of us grows oldblack crows of death and diseasedarken our days.Come Love anewlet the angels’ songcounterpoint our tearsand lace the clouds with glory.Give us an unambiguous blessingby the Birthto paint a rainbowabove our hearts’ distress.With love and prayers for Light to overcomethe current darkness, political, ecclesiastical and personal.Source: http://thewitness.org/agw/hareduke010305.html (11/5/07) – Found on the Education for Justice website.
The Slip
I love Wendell Berry’s poetry, so I was delighted to find this in the Advent collection on Education for Justice.
The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.Where the great slip gave way in the bankand an acre disappeared, all human plansdissolve. An awful clarification occurswhere a place was. Its memory breaksfrom what is known now, begins to drift.Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptinesswidens the air for birdflight, wind, and rain.As before the beginning, nothing is there.Human wrong is in the cause, humanruin in the effect–but no matter;all will be lost, no matter the reason.Nothing, having arrived, will stay.The earth, even, is like a flower, so soonpasseth it away. And yet this nothingis the seed of all–the clear eyeof Heaven, where all the worlds appear.Where the imperfect has departed, the perfectbegins its struggle to return. The good giftbegins again its descent. The maker movesin the unmade, stirring the water untilit clouds, dark beneath the surface,stirring and darkening the soul until painperceives new possibility. There is nothingto do but learn and wait, return to work
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.
Though death is in the healing, it will heal
Source: The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, by Wendell Berry. Washington,D.C.: Counterpoint, 1999.
What Is True?
AdventBy Daniel BerriganIt is not true that creation and the human family are doomed todestruction and loss —This is true: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begottenSon,that whoever believes in him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination,hunger and poverty, death and destruction —This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word,and that war and destruction rule forever —This is true: For unto us a child is born, and unto us a Son is given,and the government shall be upon his shoulder,And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,the Everlasting, the Prince of Peace.It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek torule the world —This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth,and lo, I am with you, even unto the end of the world.It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted,who are the prophets of the Church, before we can be peacemakers.This is true: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,and your sons and daughters shall prophesy,your young shall see visions,and your old shall have dreams.It is not true that our hopes for the liberation of humanity, for justice,human dignity, and peace are not meant for this earth and for this history —This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that true worshippersshall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope.Let us see visions of love and peace and justice.Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage:Jesus Christ — the Life of the world.Source:Testimony: The Word Made Fresh, by Daniel Berrigan. Maryknoll, NY:Orbis Books, 2004 – found on the Education for Justice website.
Prayer: A Progression
This Jessica Powers poem was found on the Education for Justice website.
Prayer: A ProgressionYou came by night, harsh with the need of grace,into the dubious presence of your Maker.You combed a small and pre-elected acrefor some bright word of Him, or any trace.Past the great judgment growths of thistle and thornand past the thicket of self you bore your yearningtill lo, you saw a pure white blossom burningin glimmer, then, light, then unimpeded more!Now the flower God-is-love gives ceaseless glow;now all your thoughts feast on its mystery,but when love mounts through knowledge and goes free,then will the sated thinker arise and goand brave the deserts of the soul to givethe flower he found to the contemplative.Source: “Prayer: A Progression” from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers,edited by Regina Siegfried, ASC, and Robert F. Morneau. Kansas City, MO:Sheed & Ward, 1989
We Celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe
Today is the Feast of La Virgen de Guadalupe. I share a stylized image from a photo that I took in the National Shrine in Washington, DC, and I had to include a YouTube video of the people in the cathedral in Mexico City singing “Las Mañitas,” which is traditionally sung in la madrugada (early in the morning). After all, the words, “Despierta, Madre, despierta” are meant to awaken her! The processions, the prayers, and the Mass are also customarily followed with tamales and champurado (a very special chocolate drink)!
¡Con mucho gusto!
And the lyrics to the song are:
Las Mañanitas
Estas son las mañanitas, que cantaba el Rey David,
Hoy por ser día de tu santo, te las cantamos a ti,
Despierta, Madre, despierta, mira que ya amaneció,
Ya los pajarillos cantan, la luna ya se metió.
Que linda está la mañana en que vengo a saludarte,
Venimos todos con gusto y placer a felicitarte,
Ya viene amaneciendo, ya la luz del día nos dio,
Levántate de mañana, mira que ya amaneció.
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