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Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Messenger
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Mary Oliver.
Messenger
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird –
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
And these body-clothes,
A mouth with which to give shouts of joy
To the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
Telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.Source: “Messenger” from Thirst, by Mary Oliver. Boston: Beacon Press,
2006.
Show Me Your Ways, O Lord.
Today’s Lenten poem/prayer/psalm from Education for Justice is from the Psalms: Psalm 25:6-10.
Show me your ways, O Lord,
teach me your paths;
guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.
Remember, O Lord, your great mercy and love,
for they are from of old.
Remember not the sins of my youth
and my rebellious ways;
according to your love remember me,
for you are good, O Lord.
The Ledge of Light
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Jessica Powers.
The Ledge of LIght
I have climbed up out of a narrow darkness
on 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 come
to 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 not
yet one of God’s partakers,
I visualize Him now: a thousand acres.
God is a thousand acres to me now
of high sweet-smelling April and the flow
of windy light across a wide plateau.
Ah, but when love grows unitive I know
joy 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.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Lunchtime (iPhoneography)
This last week Sister Carla and I accompanied students from Dominican University on a service trip to Tijuana. We stayed at Casa de los Pobres, served the poor there, painted a house, held a carnival for the children in another colonia, and had moving conversations with people who provide healthcare, social service, as well as with those who are served there, including a Central American couple who now live in never-never land, having been deported from the U.S. to Mexico. It was a profound experience, and we are sure it is a life-changing one for the young adults on the trip.
The picture below, taken with my iPhone, shows some of the homeless that come everyday for breakfast. The Casa used to serve lunch, but donations have dropped off in recent years. At least the 1,200 children, women, and men who come each day receive a breakfast of rice (sometimes with a little chicken – whatever is available), tortillas (sometimes bread), beans, and milky oatmeal. But most days there’s no lunch. On the lucky days, bean burritos are given out in the afternoon. The day of this picture was a lucky one, even though there was no lunch, for everyone received an apple. Fruit doesn’t arrive very often.
So as the Weekly Photo Challenge celebrates Lunchtime, let us remember all those who don’t enjoy lunch everyday. In fact, let us remember those who are so poor and far away from support systems that they are not even able to find breakfast.
Who can you remember today? And how can you help?
And If I Did, What Then?
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by George Gascoigne.
And If I Did, What Then?
“And if I did, what then?
Are you aggriev’d therefore?
The sea hath fish for every man,
And what would you have more?”Thus did my mistress once,
Amaze my mind with doubt;
And popp’d a question for the nonce
To beat my brains about.
Whereto I thus replied:
“Each fisherman can wish
That all the seas at every tide
Were his alone to fish.
“And so did I (in vain)
But since it may not be,
Let such fish there as find the gain,
And leave the loss for me.
“And with such luck and loss
I will content myself,
Till tides of turning time may toss
Such fishers on the shelf.
“And when they stick on sands,
That every man may see,
Then will I laugh and clap my hands,
As they do now at me.”Source: “And If I Did, What Then?” from The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry by
Jay Parini. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006.
Exquisit Corpse
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Scott Dalgamo.
Exquisit Corpse
Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised
from the dead. There they made him a supper.
—John 12:1-2Four days dead and sipping soup, Lazarus
Sits up, grunts, asks, “What’s today?” He reeks
Of tomb, but no one blanches at this banquet.Sister Martha feeds him, wipes his chin, reminding him
Of time and mass and the unforgiving weight of resuscitation.
There’s that late-charge he thought he was clear of,And the pruning, and that long look a bar-maid
Once gave him, but that’s all in Lazarus’ moldy brain.
The guests merely gape; the vacuum of the tombHas sucked every verb from the house, but Mary
Has an idea. She produces a jar of nard, pure, priceless,
And gloppy as death. She smashes it like some Jeremiah,Peeling the fractured alabaster, lavishing the ooze
On Jesus’ chapped knees and feet. All stand transfixed,
But Lazarus’ eyes are still on Martha’s spoon,Hovering a bit out of reach. Slowly he searches the room
For an explanation. There’s Mary, as busy as a Martha,
And Martha, nonplussed, her heart churning envy and disgust.What kind of household is this, Lazarus wonders,
Where the dead are fed and the living embalmed?
Nothing sealed is safe; nothing at rest left undisturbedBy the merciless provocations of the living.
Source: “Exquisite Corpse” by Scott Dalgarno from America Magazine , Vol. 192
No. 9 (3/14/2005).
Now I Become Myself
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by May Sarton.
Now I Become Myself
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before—“
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted so by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I love
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!Source: “Now I Become Myself” from Collected Poems 1930-1993, by May
Sarton. New York: Norton, 1993.
A Psalm of Life
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
A Psalm of Life
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our heats, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead
Act,- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead.Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
a forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.Let us then be up and doing,
with a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.Source: “A Psalm of Life” from The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1893.
Am I to Lose You?
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Louisa Sarah Bevington.
Am I to Lose You?
‘Am I to lose you now?’ The words were light;
You spoke them, hardly seeking a reply,
That day I bid you quietly ‘Good-bye,’
And sought to hide my soul away from sight.
The question echoes, dear, through many a night, —
My question, not your own – most wistfully;
‘Am I to lose him?’ – asked my heart of me;
‘ Am I to lose him now, and lose him quite?’And only you can tell me. Do you care
That sometimes we in quietness should stand
As fellow-solitudes, hand firm in hand,
And thought with thought and hope with hope compare?
What is your answer? Mine must ever be,
‘I greatly need your friendship: leave it me.’Source: “Am I to Lose You?” from Poems, Lyrics and Sonnets, by L.S.
Bevington. London: Elliot Stock, 1882.
The Garments of God
Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Jessica Powers.
The Garments of God
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at his feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous
garments
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am dust.
AdvertisementHere is the loud profession of my trust.
I will not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.Source: “The Garments of God” from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers,
edited by Regina Siegfried, ASC, and Robert F. Morneau. Kansas City, MO:
Sheed & Ward, 1989.
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