OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
In Times of Darkness, Let Us Make Hope
It seems that there is no end to the evil that confronts us. We need hope to face each day. I found this peace of wisdom from the artist Corita Kent. And I’m sure that when she said/wrote it, it was in beautiful colors on one of her vibrant and colorful serigraphs.
It is a huge danger to pretend that awful things do not happen. But you need enough hope to keep going. I am trying to make hope. Flowers grow out of darkness.
– Corita Kent
The Wonders Around Us
Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.
– Jalaluddin Rumi
The Grace of a Crocus
A single crocus blossom ought to be enough to convince our heart that springtime, no matter how predictable, is somehow a gift, gratuitous, gratis, a grace.
– David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer
Weekly Photo Challenge – Change
How will we allow ourselves to be changed . . . for the common good . . . or simply, for good?
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world — that is the myth of the “atomic age” — as in being able to remake ourselves.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Reunion
Today’s Easter Poem from Education for Justice is by Scott Cairns.
Reunion
You know already that the breath
moves in and out in order to infuse
the heart with the air it craves;
as I have said, then recollect
your mind, and draw it—and yes,
I am speaking of your mind—
as if you drew it in
through your very nostrils.
Attend to its descent, as it finds
the path to reach the heart. Drive it then,
and force it downward with the very
air you breathe to enter with a rush into
that famished, pulsing chamber.When it arrives, you will taste
the joy that follows. You’ll have nothing
to regret. Just as a man who has been far
from home a long time cannot restrain
his delight at seeing his wife and children—
just so, the spirit overflows with joy
and with unspeakable delight when it is
once more united with the soul.Source: Love’s Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life, by
Scott Cairns. Brewster, MA:Paraclete Press, 2007. p. 91
Ten Years Later
Today’s Easter Poem from Education for Justice is by David Whyte.
Ten Years Later
When the mind is clear
and the surface of the now still,
now swaying waterslaps against
the rolling kayak,I find myself near darkness,
paddling again to yellow Island.Every spring wildflowers
cover the grey rocks.Every year the sea breeze
ruffles the cold and lovely pearls
hidden in the center of the flowersas if remembering them
by touch alone.A calm and lonely, trembling beauty
that frightened me in youth.Now their loneliness
feels familiar, one small thing
I’ve learned these years,how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness
how to be found by the world.Innocence is what we allow
to be gifted back to us
once we’ve given ourselves away.There is one world only,
the one to which we gave ourselves
utterly, and to which one daywe are blessed to return.
Source: House of Belonging, by David Whyte.
Langley, WA: Many Rivers Press, 1996. p. 51
The Swan
Today’s poem from Education for Justice is by Mary Oliver.
The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?Source: The Swan, by Mary Oliver, The Paris Review #124, Fall, 1992
Optimism
Today’s Easter poem from Education for Justice is by Jane Hirshfield.
Optimism
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.Source: Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems, by Jane Hirshfeld, New York: Harper
Perennial, 2002. p. 71
Hope
Today’s poet from Education for Justice is a favorite of many, Emily Dickinson.
Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune—without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, by Emily Dickenson,
Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1924.
Late Ripeness
Today’s Easter poem from Education for Justice is by Czeslaw Milosz.
Late Ripeness
Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget – I kept saying – that we are all children of the King.For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago –
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef – they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.Source: New and Collected Poems 1931-2001 by Czelaw Milosz.
New York: Ecco, 2003.
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