Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Jessica Powers (who was a Carmelite nun).
Prayer: A Progression
You came by night, harsh with the need of grace, into the dubious presence of your Maker. You combed a small and pre-elected acre for some bright word of Him, or any trace. Past the great judgment growths of thistle and thorn and past the thicket of self you bore your yearning till lo, you saw a pure white blossom burning in 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 go and brave the deserts of the soul to give the 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 wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.”
—Milosz
And the few willing to listen demanded that we confess on television. So we kept our sins to ourselves, and they became less troubling. The halt and the lame arranged to have their hips replaced. Lepers coated their sores with a neutral foundation, avoided stronglight. The hungry ate at grand buffets and grew huge, though they remainedhungry. Prisoners became indistinguishable from the few who visited them. Widows remarried and became strangers to their kin. The orphans finally grew up and learned to fend for themselves. Even the prophets suspected they were mad, and kept their mouthsshut. Only the poor—who are with us always—only they continued in thehope.
Source: “Late Results” from Philokalia: New and Selected Poems, by Scott
Cairns. Lincoln, Nebraska: Zoo Press, 2002.
but for sorrow I might never have asked what could be but for sorrow. I might never have opened to the terrible vulnerability of love but for tears. I might never have begun this treacherous path to God but for emptiness.
Source: “but for sorrow” by Rob Suarez from America Magazine, Vol. 184 No.
10 (3/26/2001).
Poetry, art and music have the ability to open our hearts in a special way. This Lent I will be posting a poem that may help our Lenten reflections. Most of the poems can be found on the website: Education for Justice, www.educationforjustice.org. For a small fee you can have access to a large repository of reflection, study, and prayer material that can take you beyond the personal (just me and God) to our responsibility to our sisters and brothers all over the world.
May Lent be for us A time of learning to see Where Christ is crucified today, A time of learning To recognize the complex roots of injustice, To recognize the Gethsemanes In our global community. May we witness the suffering Of God’s children As Mary witnessed Her beloved son’s suffering.
May Lent be for us A time of learning to become An Easter people, A time of learning To recognize the deep roots of compassion, To recognize we too are called To witness the empty tomb and To announce To a world in despair the Hope of the Resurrection.
Our first reading today is from the book of Genesis. We are reminded of the gift that creation is to us. May we also remember that we are to be a gift to creation.
Let us ask ourselves today, “How is creation a gift to me?” and “How am I a gift to creation?”
God also said: “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant all over the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; and to all the animals of the land, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the ground, I give all the green plants for food.” And so it happened. God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed–the sixth day.
Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, so today I include both a photo from the Basilica at Lourdes, France, and a lovely stanza from the poem, “Our Lady of Lourdes”, by Francesca Brennan.
Beneath small Lourdes gray-blue sky Cool February’s airs Encanopied in ether high All serve as courtiers.
*The welcoming arms of Mary from the mosaic in the dome of the basilica at Lourdes
The crowded bus, the long queue, the railway platform, the traffic jam, the neighbor’s television sets, the heavy-footed people on the floor above you, the person who still keeps getting the wrong number on your phone. These are the real conditions of your desert. Do not allow yourself to be irritated. Do not try to escape. Do not postpone your prayer. Kneel down. Enter that disturbed solitude. Let your silence be spoiled by those sounds. It is the beginning of your desert.
– Alessandro Pronzato in Mediations on the Sand
This is an artist’s mediation “on the sand” or the beach at Bolinas
Today’s Lenten Poem from Education for Justice is “Late Results” by Scott Cairns
Our first reading today is from the book of Genesis. We are reminded of the gift that creation is to us. May we also remember that we are to be a gift to creation.
OPreach 