O Comforting Fire of Spirit

O comforting fire of Spirit,
Life, within the very Life of all Creation.
Holy you are in giving life to All. 

 Holy you are in anointing
those who are not whole;
Holy you are in cleansing
a festering wound.

O sacred breath,
O fire of love,
O sweetest taste in my breast
which fills my heart
with a fine aroma of virtues.

O most pure fountain
through whom it is known
that God has united strangers
and inquired after the lost.

O breastplate of life
and hope of uniting
all members as One,
O sword-belt of honor,
enfold those who offer blessing.

Care for those
who are imprisoned by the enemy
and dissolve the bonds of those
whom Divinity wishes to save.

O mightiest path which penetrates All,
from the height to every Earthly abyss,
you compose All, you unite All.

Through you clouds stream, ether flies,
stones gain moisture,
waters become streams,
and the earth exudes Life.

You always draw out knowledge,
bringing joy through Wisdom's inspiration.

Therefore, praise be to you
who are the sound of praise
and the greatest prize of Life,
who are hope and richest honor
bequeathing the reward of Light.

--Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) German abbess, composer, musician, theologian, mystic, and poet

The Avowal

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
free fall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

--Denise Levertov (1923–1997),  Anglo-American poet, daughter of a Welsh mother and a Hasidic father who became an Anglican priest, convert to Christianity at 60.

Prayer of Confession (based on the Prodigal Son)

I will arise and go to my Father, and say to him, 'Father, I have sinned, against heaven and in your sight, and am no more worthy to be called your child.'

In penitence we confess the many ways in which we have squandered our inheritance and imperilled our relationships, within our families and beyond them.

Have mercy upon us, our Father. Give to us, and to all who turn to you in hope, the liberating assurance of sins forgiven. Mend what is broken. Continue towards completion your liberating work among all people.

Lord, we come to ourselves when we come to you. We pray that you will so draw us to you that we may become truly ourselves, now and to all eternity.

Amen.


--adapted from Contemporary Prayers for Church and School, 1975, from SCM Press Ltd., p. 15

Based on Luke 15:11-32

Image: Return of the Prodigal Son, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1667.

A Child's Thought of God

They say that God lives very high;
But if you look above the pines
You cannot see our God; and why?

And if you dig down in the mines,
You never see Him in the gold,
Though from Him all that’s glory shines.

God is so good, He wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across His face,
Like secrets kept, for love, untold.

But still I feel that His embrace
Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place;

As if my tender mother laid
On my shut lids her kisses’ pressure,
Half waking me at night, and said,
“Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?”

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), English Romantic poet and Christian

Holy Spirit

Holy Spirit, bestowing life unto life,

moving in All.

You are the root of all creatures,

washing away all impurity,

scouring guilt,

and anointing wounds. 

Thus you are luminous and praiseworthy, Life,

awakening, and re-awakening all that is.

--Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) German abbess, theologian, musician, and poet

A Woman Speaks

Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities
who am ageless and half-grown
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths
as our mother did
mourning.

I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am woman
and not white.

--Audre Lorde (1934-1992), African American lesbian feminist writer, essayist, writer, teacher, and poet

Wrapping Stones

Everything I am is what survived
love's leaving. Everything I see, eat, want,
have is what survived the goneness
of what love is. Love, like time, takes down
the house, leaving only the partial walls, 
open squares of light for windows,
and a door. the people here wrap
their special stones in large tea leaves.
I walked back from that looking for
a fallen bamboo the right length
for drying kimonos, thinking what
a surprise it is that even such a love
becomes familiar like everything else.
I kept a place for it, stubborn, blessed.
Even through the six years of pain after.
Now it's like the sun going down
each day. Or the moon changing size
predictably all along its range of feeling.
Dies and comes again. but love is
like the salmon that have not come back
to Walnut Creek for the last three years.

-- Linda Gregg (1942-2019) American poet, who passed away today.

Epitaph on a Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets. 

-- W. H. Auden (1907-1973), Anglo-American poet and Episcopalian

Primary Wonder

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its
antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers,
wearing their colored clothes; cap and bells. 
                                                                   And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

--Denise Levertov (1923–1997), Anglo-American poet, Christian convert at 60, daughter of a Welsh mother and a Hasidic father who became an Anglican priest

A Cold Spring

for Jane Dewey, Maryland

Nothing is so beautiful as spring. -Hopkins

A cold spring:
the violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited,
carefully indicating their characteristics.
Finally a grave green dust
settled over your big and aimless hills.
One day, in a chill white blast of sunshine,
on the side of one a calf was born.
The mother stopped lowing
and took a long time eating the after-birth,
a wretched flag,
but the calf got up promptly
and seemed inclined to feel gay. 

The next day
was much warmer.
Greenish-white dogwood infiltrated the wood,
each petal burned, apparently, by a cigarette-butt;
and the blurred redbud stood
beside it, motionless, but almost more
like movement than any placeable color.
Four deer practiced leaping over your fences.
The infant oak-leaves swung through the sober oak.
Song-sparrows were wound up for the summer,
and in the maple the complementary cardinal
cracked a whip, and the sleeper awoke,
stretching miles of green limbs from the south.
In his cap the lilacs whitened,
then one day they fell like snow.
Now, in the evening,
a new moon comes.
The hills grow softer. Tufts of long grass show
where each cow-flop lies.
The bull-frogs are sounding,
slack strings plucked by heavy thumbs.
Beneath the light, against your white front door,
the smallest moths, like Chinese fans,
flatten themselves, silver and silver-gilt
over pale yellow, orange, or gray.
Now, from the thick grass, the fireflies
begin to rise:
up, then down, then up again:
lit on the ascending flight,
drifting simultaneously to the same height,
–exactly like the bubbles in champagne.
–Later on they rise much higher.
And your shadowy pastures will be able to offer
these particular glowing tributes
every evening now throughout the summer.

--Elizabeth Bishop, American poet, from Poems

April

When we have gone the stone will stop singing

April April
Sinks through the sand of names

Days to come
With no stars hidden in them

You that can wait being there

You that lose nothing
Know nothing

-- W. S. Merwin (1927- 2019), American poet, naturalist, and writer, US poet laureate (1999-2000 and 2010-2011), two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who passed away today.

Having Confessed

Having confessed he feels
That he should go down on his knees and pray
For forgiveness for his pride, for having
Dared to view his soul from the outside.
Lie at the heart of the emotion, time
Has its own work to do. We must not anticipate
Or awaken for a moment. God cannot catch us
Unless we stay in the unconscious room
Of our hearts. We must be nothing,
Nothing that God may make us something.
We must not touch the immortal material
We must not daydream to-morrow’s judgement
—
God must be allowed to surprise us.
We have sinned, sinned like Lucifer
By this anticipation. Let us lie down again
Deep in anonymous humility and God
May find us worthy material for His hand. 

--Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) ,  from Collected Poems, 2005.

Crucifixion

"Weep not for Me, Mother,
in the grave I have life."

I.
The choir of angels glorified the great hour,
the heavens melted in flames.
He said to His Father: "Why hast Thou forsaken me?"
and to His Mother: "Oh, weep not for Me..."

II.
Mary Magdalene smote her breast and wept,
the disciple whom He loved turned to stone,
but where the Mother stood in silence
nobody even dared look.

--Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), Russian poet and resister


Image: Detail from Marc Chagall's White Crucifixion, from the Art Institute of Chicago

Suburban Prayer

Grant us for grace
oppositions, stimyings
sand in our pet gears
a bubble in the cozy blood

Crowd our real estate
with the rag tag real, the world.
Marry us off, lonely girls
to Harlem and Asia. This Lent
celebrate in the haunted house, the world.

--Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016), American Jesuit priest, activist, pacifist, poet, and playwright, from And the Risen Bread, Selected Poems, 1957–1997 (1998).

Lost, All in Wonder

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God's Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth himself speaks truly or there's nothing true.

On the cross thy godhead made no sign to men,
Here thy very manhood steals from human ken:
Both are my confession, both are my belief,
And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.

I am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see,
But can plainly call thee Lord and God as he;
Let me to a deeper faith daily nearer move,
Daily make me harder hope and dearer love.

O thou our reminder of Christ crucified,
Living Bread, the life of us for whom he died,
Lend this life to me then: feed and feast my mind,
There be thou the sweetness man was meant to find.

Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican;
Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what thy bosom ran —
Blood whereof a single drop has power to win
All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

Jesu, whom I look at shrouded here below,
I beseech thee send me what I thirst for so,
Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light
And be blest forever with thy glory's sight.

-- Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), theologian and poet

The Place Where We Are Right

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.

--Yehuda Amichai, (1924-2000), acclaimed Israeli poet


Image: Freezing Rain, Frozen Ground, February 10, 2019

Prayers of the People Based on Psalm 51:10 (Pr. 19 C)

Celebrant:
Let us implore the Lord our God praying,
“Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.”

Leader:
We pray for leaders of the Church.
May they serve as examples
to those who would come to believe in Christ for eternal life.
May the Church place its hope in you, O God,
and not in human wisdom.

Silence 

People:
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me. 

Leader:
We pray for the leaders of the nations.
May they show mercy and advocate for the rights of the people.
May they, like Moses, seek the greater good rather than their own interests.

Silence

People:
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.


Leader:
We thank you for all you created.
We thank you that your Son Jesus Christ rejoiced in your creation—
telling stories about sheep, praying in the wilderness and walking on the sea.
May we also appreciate the works of your hands.

Silence

People:
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.


Leader:
We pray for the people in our lives.
May we learn to love the stiff-necked, the sinners
and all those in great need of your mercy.
Make us instruments of your peace.

(Allow the congregation to add their petitions and thanksgivings,
followed by Silence.)

People:
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.


Leader:
We pray for the sick, the anxious and the sorrowful.
Make them hear of joy and gladness,
that broken bodies and broken spirits may rejoice.

Silence

People:
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.


Leader:
We trust to your mercy, O God, all who have died.
May they rest eternally in your peace.
To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, our God,
be honor and glory forever and ever.

Silence

People:
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.

--Fr. Jeremiah Williamson, Episcopal priest, and posted on Praying the Scriptures. http://jeremiahwilliamson.blogspot.ca/

Pierce My Soul

Lord Jesus Christ,
pierce my soul with your love
so that I may always long for you alone,
who are the bread of angels
and the fulfillment of the soul's deepest desires.

May my heart always hunger and feed on you,
so that my soul may be filled with sweetness in your presence.

May my soul thirst for you,
who are the source of life, wisdom, knowledge, light
and all the riches of God our Father.

May I always seek and find you,
think about you, speak to you
and do everything for the honour and glory of your name.

Be always my hope, my peace, my refuge and help
in whom my heart is rooted
so that I may never separate from you. 

--St. Bonaventure,  (1221-1274) 13th century Franciscan bishop, theologian, and philosopher

Ash Wednesday

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull.
And God said Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III
At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, 
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee. 

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

--T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Anglo-American poet and dramatist and convert to Anglo-Catholicism,  (1927)

Ash Wednesday Call to Worship

God of salvation’s joy,
we gather to celebrate and revere you.
We come, realising that we are broken.
Forgive and re-create us.

God of unfailing love,
we gather to worship and honour you.
We come, and because of your compassion,
forgive and renew us.

God of new beginnings,
we gather to praise and thank you.
We come, and through your grace and mercy,
forgive and restore us,
so that with clean hearts we may truly worship you.
Amen.

--Joan Stott, Australian, based on Psalm 51:1-17, from her blog The Timeless Psalms.