Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Benediction


May the beauty of God
be reflected in your eyes,
the love of God
be reflected in your hands,
the wisdom of God
be reflected in your words,
and the knowledge of God
flow from your heart,
that all might see,
and seeing,  believe


John Birch, http://www.faithandworship.com/blessings_and_benedictions.html#ixzz4qjUOuv7c 

Crazy Jane on God

That lover of a night
Came when he would,
Went in the dawning light
Whether I would or no;
Men come, men go;
All things remain in God.

Banners choke the sky;
Men-at-arms tread;
Armoured horses neigh
In the narrow pass:
All things remain in God.

Before their eyes a house
That from childhood stood
Uninhabited, ruinous,
Suddenly lit up
From door to top:
All things remain in God.

I had wild Jack for a lover;
Though like a road
That men pass over
My body makes no moan
But sings on:
All things remain in God.

--William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Prayer of St. Aiden of Landisfarne

Landisfarne (Holy Island)

Leave me alone with God as much as may be.
As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore,
Make me an island, set apart,
alone with you, God, holy to you.

Then with the turning of the tide
prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond,
the world that rushes in on me
till the waters come again and fold me back to you.


Landisfarne Priory and labyrinth

Community of Aiden and Hilda daily prayers
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Friday, June 2, 2017

On the Maine Islands

No one will see
The light-stepping deer
When they come out from the alders
To look for windfalls
In the abandoned orchard.

No one will see the daylilies
The color of red foxes,
Waist-high coarse-textured lilies
That spring from the tumbled stones
Where there was once a farmhouse
And crowd around the cellar-hole
Now thick with raspberry-canes
Where hornets forage.

Mink live here, and voles,
There are seals on the offshore ledges
And herons with their harsh cries
Are nesting up in the woods,
But the man who was down by the shore
Scraping the hull of a boat
The woman feeding her hens
The child playing with fir-cones
Have been gone for a hundred years
And in the still harbor
There is no skiff but ours.

*          *          *

These granite and limestone islands,
These tops of flooded mountains
Are scattered all over the bay
Their clearings shining with wildflowers,
The live coals of hawkweed,
The daisies’ fiery white,
And finespun birdsongs shiver
Over their scraps of forest.

They’re moated with ice-cold channels
Deep enough for a whale,
Where once or twice a summer
With a slow throb of engines
The Swedish freighters go by.

When the sun comes out
The sky speaks blue
And the whole bay
Down to its least cove
Takes on a dazzle of blue,
Becomes a field of splendor.

*          *          *

High up over the harbor
Of the fishing village
On another island
Is St. Mary Star of the Sea,
Built by Italian stonecutters
Who came to work in the quarries
It’s a white frame building
The size of a one-room schoolhouse,
With six milky windows
And a low spire.
Below are the steep-pitched streets
And the fishermen’s wooden houses
With their stacks of lobster pots
Their granite garden walls
And their small gardens flaming
In the short northern summer.

Through St. Mary’s windows
Half open in the summer
We can see the harbor,
The water bluer than larkspur,
The sloping folds of granite.

An old Italian woman
Who gets to Mass early
Has come with dahlias and roses
And the stonecutters’ grandchildren
Carefully chant the Gloria
In their transparent voices

For the one who carved the islands
Has come to live among us,
And this is the house he has chosen,

St. Mary’s Star of the Sea.

--Anne Porter (1911-2011) from Living Things: Collected Poems (2006)

Thursday, June 1, 2017

For the Indifferent

Crucifixion facade at the Basilica of La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona.


We pray thee for those who
amid all the knowledge of our day
are still without knowledge;
for those who hear not the sighs of the children that toil,
nor the sobs of such as are wounded
because others have made haste to be rich;
for those who have never felt
the hot tears of the mothers of the poor
that struggle vainly against poverty and vice.
Arouse them, we beseech thee,
from their selfish comfort,
and grant them the grace of social repentance.
Smite us all with the conviction
that for us ignorance is sin,
and that we are indeed our brothers' keepers
if our own hand has helped to lay him low.
Though increase of knowledge bring increase of sorrow,
may we turn without flinching to the light
and offer ourselves as instruments of thy spirit
in bringing order and beauty
out of disorder and darkness.

--Walter Rauschenbusch, from Prayers of the Social Awakening, 1909

Prayer of Confession


O God, who has given us light, and who grieves because we have so often loved darkness better; you have called us to follow that which is good, and to flee from that which is evil; and you know how, hour after hour, day after day, we have yielded to temptations in our path, have done that which you have forbidden, and have left undone the work you have given us to do. O You, whose voice of warning and love we have so little heeded, call us yet again, we beseech You; call us that we may answer and do your bidding, that we may go astray from You no more; but that, being comforted by your love, and upheld by your strength, we may fulfill our days upon earth forgiven and at peace with You.

-- adapted to modern language from R.C. Jones, A Book of Prayers (19th century)