Today, on the First Sunday of Lent, our Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Joyce Rupp (whose books and poetry I have always enjoyed).
Dear God, why do I keep fighting you off? One part of me wants you desparately, another part of me unknowingly pushes you back and runs away.
What is there in me that so contradicts my desire for you? These transition days, these passage ways, are calling me to let go of old securities, to give myself over into your hands.
Like Jesus who struggled with the pain I, too, fight the “let it all be done.” Loneliness, lostness, non-belonging, all these hurts strike out at me, leaving me pained with this present goodbye.
I want to be more but I fight the growing. I want to be new but I hang unto the old. I want to live but I won’t face the dying. I want to be whole but cannot bear to gather up the pieces into one.
Is it that I refuse to be out of control, to let the tears take their humbling journey, to allow my spirit to feel its depression, to stay with the insecurity of “no home”?
Now is the time. You call to me, begging me to let you have my life, inviting me to taste the darkness so I can be filled with the light, allowing me to lose my direction so that I will find my way home to you.
Source: “Prayer of One Who Feels Lost” from Praying Our Goodbyes, by Joyce
Rupp. South Bend, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1988.
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
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 