Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Jesus Feeds the Birds

And it’s not always pretty.

Those lilies clothed in Solomon’s splendor
splotch with the leftover tufts

of field mice. For every hummingbird
darting at an orchid, every goldfinch
nibbling a quivering primrose stalk,

is an osprey disemboweling a flounder
or a golden eagle snapping
a badger’s neck midair. They do not

sow or heap seed heads in barns.
They swoop and pluck
in the moment, just as their meals

suddenly find themselves
sliding down a gullet. Of course I can’t
forget them, the ragged spirits of prey,

the grains and spores that never
had a chance to germinate. The dead
scamper and bloom in the shadow

of my wings, spreading and trailing
in a train of many colors, and oh,
the conversations we have.

-----Tania Runyan, NEA fellow, and poet

Scripture reference: Luke 12:22-31, 11th Sunday after Pentecost C

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Easter



Lent gathers up her cloak of sombre shading
   In her reluctant hands.
Her beauty heightens, fairest in its fading,
   As pensively she stands
Awaiting Easter’s benediction falling,
   Like silver stars at night,
Before she can obey the summons calling
   Her to her upward flight,
Awaiting Easter’s wings that she must borrow
   Ere she can hope to fly—
Those glorious wings that we shall see to-morrow
   Against the far, blue sky.
Has not the purple of her vesture’s lining
   Brought calm and rest to all?
Has her dark robe had naught of golden shining
   Been naught but pleasure’s pall?
Who knows? Perhaps when to the world returning
   In youth’s light joyousness,
We’ll wear some rarer jewels we found burning
   In Lent’s black-bordered dress.
So hand in hand with fitful March she lingers
   To beg the crowning grace
Of lifting with her pure and holy fingers
   The veil from April’s face.
Sweet, rosy April—laughing, sighing, waiting
   Until the gateway swings,
And she and Lent can kiss between the grating
   Of Easter’s tissue wings.
Too brief the bliss—the parting comes with sorrow.
   Good-bye dear Lent, good-bye!
We’ll watch your fading wings outlined to-morrow
   Against the far blue sky.

---Tekahionwake (Emily Pauline Johnson) (1961-1913), Canadian-Mohawk poet, Chautauqua speaker, journalist, storyteller, and Indigenous advocate.

Friday, April 18, 2025

Like Jesus to the Crows


    

that gathered there along his arms,
upon the invitation of a slender limb.
And not oblivious to human violence
perhaps needed rest or needed to offer
the succor of presence, despite the
stiff collar of their feathers, despite
each one being no less the children
of a father who claimed an upper realm.

It is not true they pecked his eyes. Nor
did they consider his wounds
their own. They were neither irreverent
nor quiet. They spoke in the tongues
they knew. They cawed full voiced
and would have released him from his
bindings had their beaks held the power
and had there been time in that place.

Like them, I have sought to comfort and
so be comforted. Like them
I have seen the failure of miracles when
they were most needed. Like Him, I
have called upon those so unlike myself
when my father failed to answer.

--- Vievee Francis, poet, professor, and associate  editor of Cullaloo, from Forest Primeval, 2016

Image: Jesus, by Tamàs Kerti, Hungarian artist and 3-D animator

Friday, April 11, 2025

St. Dismas

 


St. Dismas

I think of you as the prince carried home, lord, lion
With a thorn mane riding on the thumbs
Of hunters in the black air smiling,
So hungry. You’re bleeding. I need to believe in
So I believe in your blood, the long down-rivers of your waist.
Listen, is this how fathers love?
I hear your chest try to escape its ruined field,
I hear how your cheek lolls in the dark
Of your neck. Forgive parts the dry lips, lord,
Can we all live in that murmur, the slight press of tooth
To tongue. Do we speak to them, down there? Spit and split
The moonlight. Your mother’s hands float on our feet like water.
I want that you remember me when you get there,
Take me through the shock, roped by biceps,
Already part way up the sky.
Who dies first. Who dies in the lanternlight swinging.
I begin to love you deep
In the valve your father pinned
In my heart

-- Eve Jones, poet, photographer, and professor at Lindenwood University (MFA UMSL), from Dappled Things journal


39One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" 40But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." 42Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 43He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."-- Luke 23:39-43


Scripture Reference: Luke 22:14-23:56 (The Passion Narrative), Palm/Passion Sunday, Good Friday; Reign of Christ C Proper 29C


Image: Remember Me, Barbara de Reus Kamma, New Guinean/Dutch, chamois leather and scrap wood, story can be found here at artway.eu.


Taize: "Jesus, Remember Me..."



Thursday, April 10, 2025

Her Stations of the Cross




I.
Here mothers move more than others
into Mary’s mourning, each chorus
a soul full of crosses, weighted
with her child dying
continuously in the contemplation
of our contrition.


II. 
That once-upon-a-time angel’s voice
stretching anew her middle-aged womb,
she who once sang Magnify, O Magnify,
when all she screams for now
is mercy in her urgent rebirth
of sorrow.


III. 
When he stumbles,
she cannot fix his fall,
cannot cradle the boyhood
scrapes and bruises bleeding
into crowd-sanctioned murder.
No cock crows; she hears his groans
as if the world’s bones
are splintering within her.
 

IV. 
Besides the tree, he carries
the tears of the one who carried him
beneath her Eve ribs, lifted him
into a world he breathed as good,
gone now into this God-crucified-
as-her-son catastrophe
for salvation’s sake.


V. 
Simon of Cyrene stands close
Understanding too well the two sorrows—
mother and son helpless to comfort the other—
he heaves up and shoulders
the burdens of both,
his back the black tablet
of Moses’ commandments fulfilled
to the jot and tittle.


VI. 
Veronica—eyes swollen
for the Madonna and Child
wrenched from their rightful honor—
lifts her veil to cool the Savior’s pain,
alleviate, however slightly, a mother’s anguish.


VII. 
Thorns gouge the brow she stroked. 
The sweat-caked man that came out of her 
stumbles again. Already,
the sharp nails gnaw her own palms.


VIII. 
Oh, daughters of Jerusalem,
your tears sweep the streets,
wet the weary soles of Mary.
Weep for your own children
forever dashing away from Yahweh.
 

IX. 
Wretched stones that tip her sinless child,
dirt that drives down the innocent son.
His own earth hurts him more each tumble.
Three times he trips,
crashes to the dust we are,
mortal muscles turning their backs
on Man and his Mother.


X. 
Threads twisted by her own fingers,
tugged carefully through cloth:
this is the tunic they rip from him,
fabric tattooed with red;
she remembers his baby body
blood-splattered and matted.


XI. 
Her soul stabbed by the tree
that slays her son. Her heart nailed.
She swears his life spurts
from her barely breathing body.


XII. 
Death is indigo and indelible, 
the Roman sky collapsed and re-scribbled
on the shreds of her memories.
She cannot bear to look upon his face
when breath forgets its maker.


XIII. 
Ten thousand stillborns better
than this: his torso in her arms, 
icon of the inconsolable,
the flesh Pietà with its nails of pain, 
pounding, pounding. 


XIV. 
The hewn tomb seals her grief.
She remembers his first words,
his final prayer. All else rots
within her. They swaddle him,
implant him quickly behind stone. 


-- Marjorie Maddox (1959- ), American poet, editor, children's book and short story author, and teacher,  from Weeknights at the Cathedral (2006)

Monday, March 31, 2025

Sonnet: Prayer


     

Was it in Sunday school that we were taught
That prayer only counted when by rote;
This notion somehow lodged deep when we thought
To talk to God as if reciting quotes?
The words staccato sounds in breathless rhymes-- 
To bless our relatives, while half-asleep;
Confessing each day’s sins with guilty minds;
The fear of “praying God our souls to keep.”

We never thought that God might answer back.
We never thought to listen without words:
To feel God’s hand in midnight’s sacred black,
To hear God’s blessing in the song of birds,
To make a grateful bowl within each heart,
To practice prayer as welcome and as art.

------------------Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, 2025

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Postcommunion Prayer


     
Lord our God, 
you feed us in this life with bread from heaven,
the pledge and foreshadowing of future glory.
Grant that the working of this sacrament within us
may bear fruit in our daily lives;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
--Katharine Tynan (1861-1931) Irish playwright, author, and poet

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Refugee Blues

Jewish passengers fleeing Hitler aboard the M. S. St. Louis
Jewish refugees flowing Hitler aboard the M. S. St. Louis in 1939. They were turned away in Ellisville Europe, Cuba, and the US.

    

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that.

The consul banged the table and said:
“If you’ve got no passport, you’re officially dead”;
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
“If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread”;
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: “They must die”;
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

---W. H. Auden (1907- 1973) seminal British-American poet, and Pulitzer Prize winner for The Age of Anxiety. He wrote this poem in 1939 in response to the flood of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and being turned away throughout Europe and even in the United States.

You can learn more about the M.S. St. Louis here and here.

[Hosanna! Welcome to Our Hearts, Lord]


    
Hosanna! Welcome to our hearts! Lord, here
Thou hast a temple too; and full as dear
As that of Sion, and as full of sin:
Nothing but thieves and robbers dwell therein:
Enter, and chase them forth, and cleanse the floor:
Crucify them, that they may never more
Profane that holy place
Where Thou hast chose to set Thy face!

—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)

Image: Stanley Spencer (1891-1959), Christ Overturning the Money Changers' Table

Scripture reference: John 2:13-22; Daily Office Year 1, Tuesday after 1st Sunday in Lent

Sign of the Cleansing of the Temple


   
Since His twelfth year, He year by year went up
To the temple with His kinsfolk. But this year
The Lord of the temple to His temple came,
Messias before men to manifest!

And worthy of Messias, sure, a pile
More vast, magnificent, costly in detail
Of marble, gold, rare stone, and carvenwork
Than any building earth sustains to-day!

Little knew Herod he had raised a palace
Greater than that of Solomon;—for why?
Greater than Solomon should go in and out,
Should teach and heal within those holy precincts,
Should there first utter words, sounding to-day
To His kingdom’s utmost verge, words of our life!
The King had come to the house prepared for Him
Of His Father, through King Herod’s liberal care—
Unworthy he to know grace laid on him!

All that vast reach of cloisters, hemming in
The outer court of the temple, searched His eye;
Corinthian pillars, white, innumerous,
Of purest marble, delicately wrought,
Of height surpassing and majestic grace,
Reaching toward the heavens,—fitting were these
For His Father’s house, made ready for the Son.

But what of them who occupied their business
In these fair chambers? The Lord of the house hath come:
What meaneth then that lowing in His ears,
Lowing of cattle, innocent cry of lambs,
Cooing of turtle doves in sacred place,
And, worse offence, that clink of many coins
Changed at the dealers’ tables? He is come
That should come! Scourge of small cords He grasps,
And this slight weapon, plied with burning zeal,
Sufficeth all the horde to drive before Him:—
The lusty butcher used to handle beasts
Immense and furious, money-changers’ greed
Stronger than ten strong men,—of what avail
That any should resist the arm of God
Wielding His lightest weapon? Forth they go,
An ignominious crew, nor dare to seize
On coin or beast of all their greedy store:
One Man drave forth the money-getting crowd,
Their beasts and they quailing before the Judge!
And John, who saw all, held the sight in his heart,
And knew thenceforth, Wrath of the Lamb, how dread!

“Make not my Father’s house a house of sales!”
Cried He whose house it was. And all at once
The disciples bethought them of that word of prophet,
“The zeal of Thine house shall eat me up!” and knew,
With sudden rapture, sign of the Messiah!
Scared in their pride, the Jews, the priests, stand by;
They see a sign, they know it for a sign,
But have not grace of truth sign to receive.
As cobwebs swept He specious pleas aside:
‘’Tis well that beasts for sacrifice be close
At hand, lest the people’s zeal to offer cool;’
‘They come from far, here let them change the coins
They bring, for pieces meet for temple dues:’
‘Why hinder we the ignorant, hither come
To do God service?’ None of this they plead;
Christ’s word about a place of merchandise
Had found them out; they, too, were traffickers,
And knew the rebuke for them; not for nought
Had they afforded all these stalls to merchants!
Swift to the mark goes every word of His,
And, cowed, they ask for sign that they might know
By what authority He did these things.

“A sign?” saith He: “Destroy ye this fair temple,
In three days I will raise it up again!”
They, hearing, understood not; how could they
Receive that doctrine of the holy place
God made in each man for His habitation?
“Full six and forty years,” they said, “this temple
Was building! Wilt thou raise it in three days?”
But of the temple of His body spake He:
When on third day He raised Him from the dead,
The Eleven remembered how He said this thing,
And all the more believed and knew the truth.

Men say, “Now, love we but our fellow-men,
And all the secret know we of Christ’s grace;
A passion moved Him, all-consuming love
For the weak and helpless, pity for the lost:
Let us but burn with love for suffering men,
And so are we disciples of the Christ,
Name we His Name or not, as pleaseth us!”

But, as through same grey skies breaks sudden light
And glorifies a space the common earth,
So through the dull complexion of the days
He walked with men as Man, sudden brake forth
A glory—the master-passion of our Master!—
“My Father’s business” and “My Father’s house,”
“My Father worketh hitherto,” and, “I
And My Father are one,”—as when cloak blown
Aside by wind reveals rich garb beneath,
Such glimpse get we, through words He spake by times,
Of passion serene, enthusiasm meek,
Ideal, burning zeal, in heart of Christ:
“My Father,”—lo, fresh spring of all His days!
Sole Origin and End of all His ways;
And for His Father’s love of men He died!
“But He, too, loves us?” Yea, verily, for He
And the Father, One! How should He save us else?

St. John ii. 13–22

-- Charlotte Mason (1842, 1923) British educator, education reformer, philosopher of education, writer and poet

Image: Alexander Smirnov, The Cleansing of the Temple