Giving Thanks for Abundance

Giving thanks for abundance

is sweeter than the abundance itself:
Should one who is absorbed with the
Generous One
be distracted by the gift?
Thankfulness is the soul of beneficence;
abundance is but the husk,
for thankfulness brings you to the place where the Beloved lives.
Abundance yields heedlessness;
thankfulness, alertness:
hunt for bounty with the snare of gratitude to the King.

-- Rumi (13th century), Persian poet, Sufi mystic, and Muslim theologian

Lectionary scripture: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Proper 8B

The Wish to Be Generous

All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.

--Wendell Berry (1934- ), America poet, farmer, agrarian, essayist, and philosopher

Lectionary scripture: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Proper 8B

A Miracle for Breakfast

At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee, 

waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
—like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.

The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.
It was so cold we hoped that the coffee
would be very hot, seeing that the sun
was not going to warm us; and that the crumb
would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle.
At seven a man stepped out on the balcony.

He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle,
consisting of one lone cup of coffee
and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb,
his head, so to speak, in the clouds—along with the sun.

Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!
Each man received one rather hard crumb,
which some flicked scornfully into the river,
and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee.
Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle.

I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
—I saw it with one eye close to the crumb—

and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
my mansion, made for me by a miracle,
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river
working the stone. Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee.

We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.


-- Elizabeth Bishop, American poet.

Waking Early Sunday Morning

O to break loose, like the chinook
salmon jumping and falling back,
nosing up to the impossible
stone and bone-crushing waterfall –
raw-jawed, weak-fleshed there, stopped by ten
steps of the roaring ladder, and then
to clear the top on the last try,
alive enough to spawn and die.

Stop, back off. The salmon breaks
water, and now my body wakes
to feel the unpolluted joy
and criminal leisure of a boy –
no rainbow smashing a dry fly
in the white run is free as I,
here squatting like a dragon on
time's hoard before the day's begun!

Fierce, fireless mind, running downhill.
Look up and see the harbor fill:
business as usual in eclipse
goes down to the sea in ships –
wake of refuse, dacron rope,
bound for Bermuda or Good Hope,
all bright before the morning watch
the wine-dark hulls of yawl and ketch.

I watch a glass of water wet
with a fine fuzz of icy sweat,
silvery colors touched with sky,
serene in their neutrality –
yet if I shift, or change my mood,
I see some object made of wood,
background behind it of brown grain,
to darken it, but not to stain.

O that the spirit could remain
tinged but untarnished by its strain!
Better dressed and stacking birch,
or lost with the Faithful at Church –
anywhere, but somewhere else!
And now the new electric bells,
clearly chiming, "Faith of our fathers,"
and now the congregation gathers.

O Bible chopped and crucified
in hymns we hear but do not read,
none of the milder subtleties
of grace or art will sweeten these
stiff quatrains shoveled out four-square –
they sing of peace, and preach despair;
yet they gave darkness some control,
and left a loophole for the soul.

When will we see Him face to face?
Each day, He shines through darker glass.
In this small town where everything
is known, I see His vanishing
emblems, His white spire and flag-
pole sticking out above the fog,
like old white china doorknobs, sad,
slight, useless things to calm the mad.

Hammering military splendor,
top-heavy Goliath in full armor –
little redemption in the mass
liquidations of their brass,
elephant and phalanx moving
with the times and still improving,
when that kingdom hit the crash:
a million foreskins stacked like trash ...

Sing softer! But what if a new
diminuendo brings no true
tenderness, only restlessness,
excess, the hunger for success,
sanity or self-deception
fixed and kicked by reckless caution,
while we listen to the bells –
anywhere, but somewhere else!

O to break loose. All life's grandeur
is something with a girl in summer ...
elated as the President
girdled by his establishment
this Sunday morning, free to chaff
his own thoughts with his bear-cuffed staff,
swimming nude, unbuttoned, sick
of his ghost-written rhetoric!

No weekends for the gods now. Wars
flicker, earth licks its open sores,
fresh breakage, fresh promotions, chance
assassinations, no advance.
Only man thinning out his kind
sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind
swipe of the pruner and his knife
busy about the tree of life ...

Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;
peace to our children when they fall
in small war on the heels of small
war – until the end of time
to police the earth, a ghost
orbiting forever lost
in our monotonous sublime.

--Robert Lowell (1917-1977) American poet

Job: The Voice from the Whirlwind

 

From The Book of Job

Then The Unnameable Answered Job From Within The Whirlwind:

Who is this whose ignorant words
smear my design with darkness?
Stand up now like a man;
I will question you: please, instruct me.

Where were you when I planned the earth?
Tell me, if you are so wise.
Do you know who took its dimensions,
measuring its length with a cord?
What were its pillars built on?
Who laid down its cornerstone,
while the morning stars burst out singing
and the angels shouted for joy!

Were you there when I stopped the waters,
as they issued gushing from the womb?
when I wrapped the ocean in clouds
and swaddled the sea in shadows?
when I closed it in with barriers
and set its boundaries, saying,
“Here you may come, but no farther;
here shall your proud waves break.”

Have you ever commanded morning
or guided dawn to its place—
to hold the corners of the sky
and shake off the last few stars?
All things are touched with color;
the whole world is changed.

Have you walked through the depths of the ocean
or dived to the floor of the sea?
Have you stood at the gates of doom
or looked through the gates of death?
Have you seen to the edge of the universe?
Speak up, if you have such knowledge.

Where is the road to light?
Where does darkness live?
(Perhaps you will guide them home
or show them the way to their house.)
You know, since you have been there
and are older than all creation.

Have you seen where the snow is stored
or visited the storehouse of hail,
which I keep for the day of terror,
the final hours of the world?
Where is the west wind released
and the east wind sent down to earth?

Who cuts a path for the thunderstorm
and carves a road for the rain—
to water the desolate wasteland,
the land where no man lives;
to make the wilderness blossom
and cover the desert with grass?

Does the rain have a father?
Who has begotten the dew?
Out of whose belly is the ice born?
Whose womb labors with the sleet?
(The water’s surface stiffens;
the lake grows hard as rock.)

Can you tie the Twins together
or loosen the Hunter’s cords?
Can you light the Evening Star
or lead out the Bear and her cubs?
Do you know all the patterns of heaven
and how they affect the earth?

If you shout commands to the thunderclouds,
will they rush off to do your bidding?
If you clap for the bolts of lightning,
will they come and say, “Here we are”?
Who gathers up the stormclouds,
slits them and pours them out,
turning dust to mud
and soaking the cracked clay?

Do you hunt game for the lioness
and feed her ravenous cubs,
when they crouch in their den, impatient,
or lie in ambush in the thicket?
Who finds her prey at nightfall,
when her cubs are aching with hunger?

Do you tell the antelope to calve
or ease her when she is in labor?
Do you count the months of her fullness
and know when her time has come?
She kneels; she tightens her womb;
she pants, she presses, gives birth.
Her little ones grow up;
they leave and never return.

Who unties the wild ass
and lets him wander at will?
He ranges the open prairie
and roams across the saltlands.
He is far from the tumult of cities;
he laughs at the driver’s whip.
He scours the hills for food,
in search of anything green.

Is the wild ox willing to serve you?
Will he spend the night in your stable?
Can you tie a rope to his neck?
Will he harrow the fields behind you?
Will you trust him because he is powerful
and leave him to do your work?
Will you wait for him to come back,
bringing your grain to the barn?

Do you deck the ostrich with wings,
with elegant plumes and feathers?
She lays her eggs in the dirt
and lets them hatch on the ground,
forgetting that a foot may crush them
or sharp teeth crack them open.
She treats her children cruelly,
as if they were not her own.
For God deprived her of wisdom
and left her with little sense.
When she spreads her wings to run,
she laughs at the horse and rider.

Do you give the horse his strength?
Do you clothe his neck with terror?
Do you make him leap like a locust,
snort like a blast of thunder?
He paws and champs at the bit;
he exults as he charges into battle.
He laughs at the sight of danger;
he does not wince from the sword
or the arrows nipping at his ears
or the flash of spear and javelin.
With his hooves he swallows the ground;
he quivers at the sound of the trumpet.
When the trumpet calls, he says, “Ah!”
From far off he smells the battle,
the thunder of the captains and the shouting.

Do you show the hawk how to fly,
stretching his wings on the wind?
Do you teach the vulture to soar
and build his nest in the clouds?
He makes his home on the mountaintop,
on the unapproachable crag.
He sits and scans for prey;
from far off his eyes can spot it;
his little ones drink its blood.
Where the unburied are, he is.

Then The Unnameable Asked Job:

Has God’s accuser resigned?
Has my critic swallowed his tongue?

Job Said To The Unnameable:

I am speechless: what can I answer?
I put my hand on my mouth.
I have said too much already;
now I will speak no more.

Then The Unnameable Again Spoke To Job From Within The Whirlwind:

Do you dare to deny my judgment?
Am I wrong because you are right?
Is your arm like the arm of God?
Can your voice bellow like mine?
Dress yourself like an emperor.
Climb up onto your throne.
Unleash your savage justice.
Cut down the rich and the mighty.
Make the proud man grovel.
Pluck the wicked from their perch.
Push them into the grave.
Throw them, screaming, to hell.
Then I will admit
that your own strength can save you.

Look now: the Beast that I made:
he eats grass like a bull.
Look: the power in his thighs,
the pulsing sinews of his belly.
His penis stiffens like a pine;
his testicles bulge with vigor.
His ribs are bars of bronze,
his bones iron beams.
He is first of the works of God,
created to be my plaything.
He lies under the lotus,
hidden by reeds and shadows.
He is calm though the river rages,
though the torrent beats against his mouth.
Who then will take him by the eyes
or pierce his nose with a peg?

Will you catch the Serpent with a fishhook
or tie his tongue with a thread?
Will you pass a string through his nose
or crack his jaw with a pin?
Will he plead with you for mercy
and timidly beg your pardon?
Will he come to terms of surrender
and promise to be your slave?
Will you play with him like a sparrow
and put him on a leash for your girls?
Will merchants bid for his carcass
and parcel him out to shops?
Will you riddle his skin with spears,
split his head with harpoons?
Go ahead: attack him:
you will never try it again.

Look: hope is a lie:
you would faint at the very sight of him.
Who would dare to arouse him?
Who would stand in his way?
Who under all the heavens
could fight against him and live?
Who could pierce his armor
or shatter his coat of mail?
Who could pry open his jaws,
with their horrible arched teeth?
He sneezes and lightnings flash;
his eyes glow like dawn.

Smoke pours from his nostrils
like steam from a boiling pot.
His breath sets coals ablaze;
flames leap from his mouth.
Power beats in his neck,
and terror dances before him.
His skin is hard as a rock,
his heart huge as a boulder.
No sword can stick in his flesh;
javelins shatter against him.
He cracks iron like straw,
bronze like rotten wood.
No arrow can pierce his skin;
slingstones hit him and crumble.
He chews clubs to splinters
and laughs at the quivering spear.
His belly is thick with spikes;
he drags the swamp like a rake.
When he rises the waves fall back
and the breakers tremble before him.
He makes the ocean boil,
lashes the sea to a froth.
His wake glistens behind him;
the waters are white with foam.
No one on earth is his equal—
a creature without fear.
He looks down on the highest.
He is king over all the proud beasts.

Then Job Said To The Unnameable:

I know you can do all things
and nothing you wish is impossible.
Who is this whose ignorant words
cover my design with darkness?
I have spoken of the unspeakable
and tried to grasp the infinite.
Listen and I will speak;
I will question you: please, instruct me.
I had heard of you with my ears;
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I will be quiet,
comforted that I am dust.

--Stephen Mitchell (1943- ), translator and poet.

Lectionary reading: Job 38:1-11, Proper 7B (track 2)

Come Into Animal Presence

Come into animal presence 

No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn't
quicken his trotting
across the track into the palm brush.

What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.

--Denise Levertov, Anglo American poet, teacher, and convert to Catholicism.

How?

How shall we sing the Lord’s songs
in a strange land? The old rhythms,
the melodies of praise, strangle
in our throats and the words
fall to the ground like leaves in autumn.
The air thickens with suspicion and doubt
and who’s to say, anymore, what
is true enough to last, to prevail?
Isolation feels like a punishment
for offenses we never performed.
Let us trust, now, the ground under
our feet—that which has proven steady
for generations. Look up. The heavens
are still there, unclouded, beatific.
We breathe, even though masks clothe
our faces. Prayer surrounds us, close
as our skin, weaving for us garments of
trust and solace. Even in our isolation
we are joined in love, never alone.

--Luci Shaw (1928- ), Anglo-American poet and Episcopalian, from The Generosity (2020).

Goliath of Gath (Excerpt)

David undaunted thus, “Thy spear and shield
Shall no protection to thy body yield:
Jehovah’s name——no other arms I bear,
I ask no other in this glorious war.
To-day the Lord of Hosts to me will give
Vict’ry, to-day thy doom thou shalt receive;
The fate you threaten shall your own become,
And beasts shall be your animated tomb,
That all the earth’s inhabitants may know
That there’s a God, who governs all below:
This great assembly too shall witness stand,
That needs nor sword, nor spear, th’ Almighty’s hand:
The battle his, the conquest he bestows,
And to our pow’r consigns our hated foes.”

Thus David spoke; Goliath heard and came
To meet the hero in the field of fame.
Ah! fatal meeting to thy troops and thee,
But thou wast deaf to the divine decree;
Young David meets thee, meets thee not in vain;
’Tis thine to perish on th’ ensanguin’d plain.

And now the youth the forceful pebble flung,
Philistia trembled as it whizz’d along:
In his dread forehead, where the helmet ends,
Just o’er the brows the well-aim’d stone descends,
It pierc’d the skull, and shatter’d all the brain,
Prone on his face he tumbled to the plain:
Goliath’s fall no smaller terror yields
Than riving thunders in aerial fields:
The soul still ling’red in its lov’d abode,
Till conq’ring David o’er the giant strode:
Goliath’s sword then laid its master dead,
And from the body hew’d the ghastly head;
The blood in gushing torrents drench’d the plains,
The soul found passage through the spouting veins.

And now aloud th’ illustrious victor said,
“Where are your boastings now your champion’s dead?”
Scarce had he spoke, when the Philistines fled:
But fled in vain; the conqu’ror swift pursu’d:
What scenes of slaughter! and what seas of blood!
There Saul thy thousands grasp’d th’ impurpled sand
In pangs of death the conquest of thine hand;
And David there were thy ten thousands laid:
Thus Israel’s damsels musically play’d.

Near Gath and Ekron many an hero lay,
Breath’d out their souls, and curs’d the light of day:
Their fury, quench’d by death, no longer burns,
And David with Goliath’s head returns,
To Salem brought, but in his tent he plac’d
The load of armour which the giant grac’d.
His monarch saw him coming from the war,
And thus demanded of the son of Ner.
“Say, who is this amazing youth?” he cry’d,
When thus the leader of the host reply’d;
“As lives thy soul I know not whence he sprung,
So great in prowess though in years so young:”
“Inquire whose son is he,” the sov’reign said,
“Before whose conq’ring arm Philistia fled.”
Before the king behold the stripling stand,
Goliath’s head depending from his hand:
To him the king: “Say of what martial line
“Art thou, young hero, and what sire was thine?”
He humbly thus; “The son of Jesse I:
“I came the glories of the field to try.
Small is my tribe, but valiant in the fight;
Small is my city, but thy royal right.”
“Then take the promis’d gifts,” the monarch cry’d,
Conferring riches and the royal bride:
“Knit to my soul for ever thou remain
With me, nor quit my regal roof again.”

--Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), first African American to publish a book of poetry (Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, 1773) in the colonies. She was freed after publishing her book of poetry, but died poor and in obscurity.

Scripture reference and lectionary text for Proper 7B: 1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49

Bad Theology: A Quiz

"And lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them:
and they were sore afraid."

Whenever we aver “the God is nigh,”
do we imply that He is ever otherwise? 

When, in scripture, God's anger is said
to be aroused, just how do you take that? 

If --whether now or in the fullness --we
stipulate that God is all in all, just where

or how could you position Hell ? Which
is better -- to break the law and soothe 

the wounded neighbor, or to keep the law
and cause the neighbor pain? Do you mean it? 

If another sins, what is that to you?
When the sinful suffer publicly, do you 

find secret comfort in their grief, or will
you also weep? They are surely grieving; 

are you weeping now? Assuming sin is sin
whose do you condemn? Who is judge? Who 

will feed the lambs? The sheep? Who, the goats?
Who will sell and give? Who will be denied? 

Whose image haunts the mirror? And why
are you still here? What exactly do you hope 

to become? When will you begin?



--Scott Cairns (1954- ), American poet, Orthodox Christian, and former professor at the University of Missouri, from Slow Pilgrim: the Collected Poems