Whatever is Foreseen in Joy

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.
And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

--Wendell Berry (1935- ), American poet, farmer, essayist, teacher, and agrarian.

Scripture reference: Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20 and Galatians 6:1-16, Proper 9C

The Burdens of All

We may sigh o’er the heavy burdens
Of the black, the brown and white;
But if we all clasped hands together
The burdens would be more light.
How to solve life’s saddest problems,
Its weariness, want and woe,
Was answered by One who suffered
In Palestine long ago.

He gave from his heart this precept,
To ease the burdens of men,
“As ye would that others do to you
Do ye even so to them.”
Life’s heavy, wearisome burdens
Will change to a gracious trust
When men shall learn in the light of God
To be merciful and just.

Where war has sharpened his weapons,
And slavery masterful had,
Let white and black and brown unite
To build the kingdom of God.
And never attempt in madness
To build a kingdom or state,
Through greed of gold or lust of power,
On the crumbling stones of hate.

The burdens will always be heavy,
The sunshine fade into night,
Till mercy and justice shall cement
The black, the brown and the white.
And earth shall answer with gladness,
The herald angel’s refrain,
When “Peace on earth, good will to men”
Was the burden of their strain.

--Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911), African American poet, journalist, novelist, teacher, activist, suffragette, orator, and worker on the Underground Railroad, born to free parents in 1825.

Scripture reference: Galatians 6:1-16, Proper 9C

what they did yesterday afternoon

they set my aunts house on fire

i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who use to love me
tried to ‘okay’ my voice
i said hello
he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?

i’ve been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like;
dear god
i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.

later that night

i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.


--Warsan Shire (1988- ), Somali-British poet, first Young Poet Laureate of London, lyricist and collaborator with Beyonce Knowles-Carter

Image: Fallen Caryatid with Stone, Auguste Rodin, from the Musee Rodin in Paris

Valentine for Ernest Mann

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

-- Naomi Shihab Nye (1952- ), Ferguson-born Palestinian American poet

A Found Poem

Like everybody else, I bowed my head
during the consecration of the bread and wine
lifted my eyes to the raised host and raised chalice,
believed (whatever it means) that a change occurred.
I went to the altar rails and received the mystery
on my tongue, returned to my place, shut my eyes fast, made
an act of thanksgiving, opened my eyes and felt
time starting up again.
There was never a scene
when I had it out with myself or with an other.
The loss of faith occurred off stage. Yet I cannot
disrespect words like ‘thanksgiving’ or ‘host’
or even ‘communion wafer.’ They have an undying
pallor and draw, like well water far down.

– Seamus Heaney (1939- 2013) Northern Irish poet, Nobel Prize winner, Oxford Professor of Poetry, and one of the pre-eminent poets of the 20th century 

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

- Maggie Smith (1977- ), American poet and mother, first published in Waxwing journal, 2016.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 

Because their words had forked no lightning they 

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright 

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, 

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, 

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. 

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

--Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), Welsh lyric poet, playwright, and author

The Peninsula

When you have nothing more to say, just drive 

For a day all round the peninsula. 

The sky is tall as over a runway, 

The land without marks, so you will not arrive 

But pass through, though always skirting landfall. 

At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill, 

The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable 

And you’re in the dark again. Now recall 

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log, 

That rock where breakers shredded into rags, 

The leggy birds stilted on their own legs, 

Islands riding themselves out into the fog, 

And drive back home, still with nothing to say 

Except that now you will uncode all landscapes 

By this: things founded clean on their own shapes, 

Water and ground in their extremity.

– Seamus Heaney (1939- 2013) Northern Irish poet, Nobel Prize winner, Oxford Professor of Poetry, and one of the pre-eminent poets of the 20th century 

I Am Not A Camera

To call our sight Vision
implies that, to us,
all objects are subjects.

What we have not named
or beheld as a symbol
escapes our notice.

We never look at two people
or one person twice
in the same way.

It is very rude to take close-ups and, except
when engaged, we don’t:
lovers, approaching to kiss,
instinctively shut their eyes before their faces
can be reduced to
anatomical data.

Instructive it may be to peer through lenses:
each time we do, though, we should apologise
to the remote or the small for intruding
upon their quiddities.

The camera records
visual facts: ie.,
all may be fictions.

Flash-backs falsify the Past:
they forget
the remembering Present.

On the screen we can only
witness human behaviour:
Choice is for camera-crews.

The camera may
do justice to laughter, but must
degrade sorrow.


-- W. H. Auden (1907- 1973), BritishAmerican poet, essayist, and teacher

Prayers of the People for Trinity Sunday

We come boldly to the throne of grace,
praying to the almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
for mercy and grace.
We plead before your throne in heaven.
Father of heaven, whose love profound
a ransom for our souls has found:
We pray for the world, created by your love,
for its nations and governments …
Extend to them your peace, pardoning love, mercy and grace.
We plead before your throne in heaven.

Almighty Son, incarnate Word,
our Prophet, Priest, Redeemer, Lord:
We pray for the Church, created for your glory,
for its ministry to reflect those works of yours …
Extend to us your salvation, growth, mercy and grace.
We plead before your throne in heaven.

Eternal Spirit, by whose breath
the soul is raised from sin and death:
We pray for families and individuals, created in your image,
for the lonely, the bereaved, the sick and the dying …
Breathe on them the breath of life
and bring them to your mercy and grace.
We plead before your throne in heaven.

Thrice holy! Father, Spirit, Son,
Mysterious Godhead, Three in One:
We pray for ourselves,
for your Church, for all whom we remember before you …

Bring us all to bow before your throne in heaven,
to receive life and pardon, mercy and grace for all eternity,
as we worship you, saying,
Holy, holy, holy Lord,
God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest. Amen.

-- from the Church of England

Trinity Sunday Benediction

Go out and in all of life, worship the Lord.

Entrust yourself to the winds of God’s Spirit;
put to death selfish desires,
and offer yourself for God’s mission in the world.

And may God give strength to you and to all;
May Christ Jesus bless you with peace;
And may the Holy Spirit, whispering within your hearts,
give you assurance that you are God’s children.

--Nathan Nettleton, found at Re-Worship blog.

Trinitarian benediction based on 2 Corinthians 13:14

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 

and the love of God, 

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. 

Amen.

Ah, Ah

for Lurline McGregor


Ah, ah cries the crow arching toward the heavy sky over the marina.
Lands on the crown of the palm tree.

Ah, ah slaps the urgent cove of ocean swimming through the slips.
We carry canoes to the edge of the salt.

Ah, ah groans the crew with the weight, the winds cutting skin.
We claim our seats. Pelicans perch in the draft for fish.

Ah, ah beats our lungs and we are racing into the waves.
Though there are worlds below us and above us, we are straight ahead.

Ah, ah tattoos the engines of your plane against the sky—away from these waters.
Each paddle stroke follows the curve from reach to loss.

Ah, ah calls the sun from a fishing boat with a pale, yellow sail. We fly by
on our return, over the net of eternity thrown out for stars.

Ah, ah scrapes the hull of my soul. Ah, ah.


-- Joy Harjo (1951- ), poet laureate of the US, member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, teacher, musician, and native Tulsan, from How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems:1975-2001

The Song is You

Musical instruments sleep in the dark
for several hours a day:
the folks we belong to aren't always at play,
so we can't always be at work.

Our silence holds music: an undiscovered bourne,
horizons which have never been viewed,
like undeclared love growing deeper in solitude,
or the crystalline heart of a stone.

My sleep, however, was more like a death:
in the dark of an attic for years;
forgetting my existence, and my glorious career
with the best female swing band on the earth.

I was the great love of my Sweetheart's life.
A man came between us. And soon
I was in the dark collecting dust and out of tune;
they were pronounced man and wife.

Instead of the charts, my gal read Dr. Spock.
We played once a week, once a year . . .
At first, from my closet, I was able to hear
her family's coninuo of talk.

My Sweetheart's grandson brought me to the shop.
Something has ruined my voice.
Older, not riper, I'm a sorry old bass.
But that doesn't mean I've lost hope

. . .that someone will hold me in a tender embrace,
her arms will encircle my neck;
someone will press her warm length to my back,
and pluck notes from my gut with her fingers' caress.

--Marilyn Nelson, from Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-- Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Victorian poet, professor of poetry at Oxford, and critic

Sunday Morning

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.


II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.


III

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.


IV

She says, “I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured
As April’s green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.


V

She says, “But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.”
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.


VI

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.


VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.


VIII

She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

-- Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), lawyer, insurance executive, and outstanding poet awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and two National Book Awards. This is the full version of this poem from 1923. Study guide for this poem can be found here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70288/wallace-stevens-sunday-morning 

Pentecost Benediction (Acts 2, Psalm 104, John 14)

The God who made this amazing universe

is creating you anew every day.
Jesus Christ, the resurrected One,
offers you peace that never dies.
The Holy Spirit is setting your hearts on fire—
right here, right now.
Go in peace, and be transformed,
that you may change the world. Amen.

--Laura Jaquith Bartlett, from Ministry Matters

Pentecost Gathering Prayer: After the Resurrection

Even after the resurrection, when the disciples 

were weighed down with worry,
Jesus assured them that they were not alone:
“The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
in my name, will teach you everything,
and remind you of all that I have said to you.”

Even after the resurrection, when the disciples
were burdened by their fears,
Jesus calmed their troubled hearts:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled,
and do not let them be afraid.”

Even after the resurrection, when we struggle
with our faith,
Jesus blesses us with comfort and hope:
“Peace I leave with you; 

my peace I give to you.”

Especially after the resurrection, when our souls
are dry and barren,
the Holy Spirit blows through our lives,
bringing us new life. Alleluia!

--Laura Jaquith Bartlett, from Ministry Matters

Prayer To the Holy Spirit

Lord Jesus, as God's Spirit came down and rested upon you,

May the same Spirit rest on us,
Bestowing his sevenfold gifts.

First, grant us the gift of understanding,
By which your precepts may enlighten our minds.

Second, grant us counsel, by which we may follow
in your footsteps on the path of righteousness.

Third, grant us courage,
by which we may ward off the enemy's attacks.

Fourth, grant us knowledge,
by which we can distinguish good from evil.

Fifth, grant us piety,
by which we may acquire compassionate hearts.

Sixth, grant us fear,
by which we may draw back from evil
and submit to what is good.

Seventh, grant us wisdom,
that we may taste fully the life-giving sweetness of your love.

-- St. Bonaventure (1221-1274), Italian Franciscan, theologian, and cardinal.