Sonnet LXXIII

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

--William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English poet, dramatist, and actor

Beatitudes

Grant, O Lord, that having put aside every weight and the sins that do so easily beset us; and every motion both of flesh and spirit which is contrary to the will of Your holiness:

We may be meek, that so we may inherit the earth:
May be peacemakers, that so we may be called children of God:
May be merciful, that so we may obtain mercy:
May be poor in spirit, that so we may have part in the kingdom of heaven:
May be pure in heart, that so we may see God:
May hunger and thirst after righteousness, that so we may be filled:
May mourn, that so we may be comforted:
And may be prepared for persecutions and reproaches for righteousness’ sake.
That so our reward may be in heaven. 

-- Launcelot Andrewes (1555-1626), English bishop, theologian, and scholar whose feast day is today, in Evelyn Underhill, Evelyn Underhill's Prayer Book.



Image: Cosimo Roselli, The Sermon on the Mount, fresco in the Sistine Chapel, 1481-1482

Day in Autumn

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

--Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Bohemian-Austrian author, mystic, and poet (translated by Mary Kinzie)

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
   For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

--John Keats (1795-1821), English Romantic poet

Ave Generosa

I behold you,
noble, glorious and whole woman,
the pupil of purity.
You are the sacred matrix
in which God takes great pleasure.
The essences of Heaven flooded into you,
and the Great Word of God dressed itself in flesh.
You appeared as a shining white lily,
as God looked upon you before all of Creation.

O lovely and tender one,
how greatly has God delighted in you.
For He has placed His passionate embrace within you,
so that His Son might nurse at your breast.

Your womb held joy,
with all the celestial symphony sounding through you,
Virgin, who bore the Son of God,
when your purity became luminous in God.

Your flesh held joy,
like grass upon which dew falls,
pouring its life-green into it,
and so it is true in you also,
o Mother of all delight.

Now let all Ecclesia shine in joy
and sound in symphony
praising the most tender woman,
Mary, the bequeather/seed-source of God.

Amen.

--Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), German Benedictine abbess, religious philosopher, poet, composer, musician, playwright, and visionary. Her feast day is today.


Image: Icon of Hildegard von Bingen, from Our Lady of the Mountains Roman Catholic parish in Jasper, GA.

Lightenings viii

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down a rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
`This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’
The abbot said, `Unless we help him.’ So 
They did, the freed ship sailed and the man climbed back
Out of the marvelous as he had known it.

--Seamus Heaney (1939- ), Irish poet, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1996


Image: Ruins of the Cathedral at Clonmacnoise, Ireland

Viewing Peach Blossoms and Realizing the Way

In spring wind
peach blossoms
begin to come apart.
Doubts do not grow
branches and leaves.

-- Dogen (1200-1253), Japanese Zen Buddhist and poet

Kiss the Earth

Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Bring the Earth your love and happiness.
The Earth will be safe when we feel safe in ourselves.

--Thich Nhat Hahn (1926- ), Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, peace activist, teacher, poet, and writer


Photo: A Tibetan Buddhist monk works on a mandala at the St. Louis Art Museum, photo mine.

With my mouth, God says

'With my mouth,'

God says,

'I kiss my own chosen creation.

I uniquely,

lovingly,

embrace every image

I have made

out of the earth’s clay.

With a fiery spirit

I transform it

into a body

to serve all the world.'

-- Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), German Benedictine abbess, mystic, compose, poet, saint, Doctor of the Church, scientist, playwright, and visionary

Optimism

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs–all this resinous, unretractable earth.

-- Jane Hirshfield (1953- ), American poet and editor


Image: The Survivor Tree at the Oklahoma City Memorial and Museum

Loving tenderness

Loving tenderness abounds for all
from the darkest
to the most eminent one beyond the stars,
Exquisitely loving all
she bequeaths the kiss of peace
upon the ultimate King.

--Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), German Benedictine abbess, religious philosopher, poet, composer, musician, playwright, and visionary.


Image: Painting of Hildegard von Bingen, modern.

Gathering Prayer

Gathered round a table
is where Jesus so often met people...

... gathered round the table of Matthew,
the table of Zacchaeus,
the table of Simon,
the table of Peter,
the table of Lazarus and Martha and Mary,
the tables of Joanna and Susannah...

... gathered round a table
where he could see people face to face,
listen to their stories, share their laughter.

And here,
we are gathered around a table
because this is the place where Jesus has promised to be
for those who want to meet him.

So accept his invitation
and feel welcome at this table.
Jesus Christ,
who here offers us a foretaste of eternal life,
invites us to be his guests.

-- from "A Liturgy for Holy Communion" in A Wee Worship Book, Fifth Incarnation, by John L. Bell and Graham Maule for the Iona Community, 2015

Dangerous Women Creed

Dear God,
please make us dangerous women.
May we be women who acknowledge our power
to change, and grow, and be radically alive for God.
May we be healers of wounds and righters of wrongs.
May we weep with those who weep and
speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.
May we cherish children, embrace the elderly,
and empower the poor.
May we pray deeply and teach wisely.
May we be strong and gentle leaders.
May we sing songs of joy and talk down fear.
May we never hesitate to let passion push us,
conviction compels us, and righteous anger energize us.
May we strike fear into all that is unjust
and evil in the world.
May we dismantle abusive systems and
silence lies with truth.
May we shine like stars in a darkened generation.
May we overflow with goodness in the name of God
and by the power of Jesus.
And in that name and by that power,
may we change the world.
Dear God, please make us dangerous women.
Amen.

-- Lynne Hybels, cited in In the Gift of This New Day: Praying with the Iona Community, edited by Neil Paynter, 2015

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air
 Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

--William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet and poet laureate

September, the First Day of School

I
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.

Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible

Bow down before it, as in Joseph's dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.

II
A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler's Law,
As from the whole, inseperably, the lives,

The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form

Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.

--Howard Nemerov (1920-1991), US poet laureate 1963-1964 and 1988-1990