spring song

the green of Jesus

is breaking the ground

and the sweet

smell of delicious Jesus

is opening the house and

the dance of Jesus music

has hold of the air and

the world is turning

in the body of Jesus and

the future in possible

--Lucille Clifton (1936-2010), African American poet, writer, and educator, poet laureate of Mary;and, and to-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

Indifference

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree, 

They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do,’
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.

--The Rev. G. A. Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), Anglo-Irish Anglican priest and chaplain on the Western Front in World War I, known as "Woodbine Willie," from Rough Rhymes of a Padre (1918)

I Am Bending My Knee

I am bending my knee
In the eye of the Father who created me,
In the eye of the Son who purchased me,
In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me,
In friendship and affection.
Through Thine own Anointed One, O God,
Bestow upon us fullness in our need,
Love towards God,
The affection of God,
The smile of God,
The wisdom of God,
The grace of God,
The fear of God,
And the will of God
To do on the world of the Three,
As angels and saints
Do in heaven;
Each shade and light,
Each day and night,
Each time in kindness,
Give Thou us Thy Spirit.


--Anonymous, from the Carmina Gadelica I, 3, collected by folklorist Alexander Carmichael from the Outer Hebrides

The Night

                           John 3.2

      Through that pure virgin shrine,
That sacred veil drawn o’er Thy glorious noon,
That men might look and live, as glowworms shine,
         And face the moon,
   Wise Nicodemus saw such light
   As made him know his God by night.

      Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
Thy long-expected healing wings could see,
         When Thou didst rise!
   And, what can never more be done,
   Did at midnight speak with the Sun!

      O who will tell me where
He found Thee at that dead and silent hour?
What hallowed solitary ground did bear
         So rare a flower,
   Within whose sacred leaves did lie
   The fulness of the Deity?

      No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty cherub, nor carved stone,
But His own living works did my Lord hold
         And lodge alone;
   Where trees and herbs did watch and peep
   And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.

      Dear night! this world’s defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care’s check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul’s calm retreat
         Which none disturb!
   Christ’s progress, and His prayer time;
   The hours to which high heaven doth chime;

      God’s silent, searching flight;
When my Lord’s head is filled with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;
         His still, soft call;
   His knocking time; the soul’s dumb watch,
   When spirits their fair kindred catch.

      Were all my loud, evil days
Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,
Whose peace but by some angel’s wing or voice
         Is seldom rent,
   Then I in heaven all the long year
   Would keep, and never wander here.

      But living where the sun
Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire
Themselves and others, I consent and run
         To every mire,
   And by this world’s ill-guiding light,
   Err more than I can do by night.

      There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
         See not all clear.
   O for that night! where I in Him
   Might live invisible and dim!

-- Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) Welsh poet and devout Anglican through the English Civil War and Commonwealth

Image: Henry Ossawa Tanner, Study of Nicodemus

Scripture Link: John 3:1-17, 2 Lent A

Prayer for Overcoming Indifference

For the sin of silence,

For the sin of indifference,
For the secret complicity of the neutral,
For the closing of borders,
For the washing of hands,
For the crime of indifference,
For the sin of silence,
For the closing of borders.
For all that was done,
For all that was not done,
Let there be no forgetfulness before the Throne of Glory;
Let there be remembrance within the human heart;
And let there at last be forgiveness
When your children, O God,
Are free and at peace.

--Chaim Stern, editor, Gates of Repentance (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1978).

Lenten Prayer, Week 1

The lenten spring shines forth,

the flower of repentance!
Let us cleanse ourselves from all evil,
crying out to the Giver of Light:
"Glory to You, O Lover of man!"

--The Rev. Thomas Hopko (1939-2015), Orthodox priest and seminary professor, theologian, and dean, from The Lenten Spring

Marked By Love

Ashes to tie us to dust, 

the alleged poverty of too brief time on Earth,
but instead proclaims our kinship
with the flaring symphony of stars overhead,

The fragrant oil graves the ash upon each forehead,
and answers the ash’s challenge
with a proclamation of being chosen and beloved,
entrusted as heirs of God’s promised lovingkindness.

Then the cross,
the shape of love that never gives up,
drawn into the tender and wide open embrace
of the One, who proclaims with generous grace
that Love
always
wins.

Emptiness isn’t poverty,
but the ability to make room for something better,
hallowing and honoring us
by reminding us of our unity
with all of creation borne tenderly by God.


--Leslie Barnes Scoopmire. This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on February 23, 2023.

Death in Leamington

She died in the upstairs bedroom
By the light of the ev’ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
From over Leamington Spa

Beside her the lonely crochet
Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have work’d it
Were dead as the spoken word.

And Nurse came in with the tea-things
Breast high ‘mid the stands and chairs-
But Nurse was alone with her own little soul,
And the things were alone with theirs.

She bolted the big round window,
She let the blinds unroll,
She set a match to the mantle,
She covered the fire with coal.

And “Tea!” she said in a tiny voice
“Wake up! It’s nearly five”
Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness,
Half dead and half alive.

Do you know that the stucco is peeling?
Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
Do you hear the plaster drop?

Nurse looked at the silent bedstead,
At the gray, decaying face,
As the calm of a Leamington ev’ning
Drifted into the place.

She moved the table of bottles
Away from the bed to the wall;
And tiptoeing gently over the stairs
Turned down the gas in the hall.

--Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) British poet, broadcaster, defender of Victorian architecture, and writer, British Poet Laureate 1972-1984.

Lenten Communion Invitation from Iona

Like a tent in the wilderness 

the table of God stands open and ready 

as a place of sanctuary and safety, 

of hospitality and healing. 

So come, 

all you who are tired and travel-stained, 

footsore and famished; 

come with your fellow travellers 

and find companionship and comfort; 

for here, Jesus – 

who knows what it is to wander, watch and wrestle 

in desert places – 

waits to meet us and welcome us in, 

offering us rest and restoration, 

solace and strength, 

for the journey still to come.

-- Pat Bennet, from Walking the Wilderness: A Communion Liturgy for the Season of Lent (pdf purchased from Wild Goose Publications)

Gratitude

A tempest threw a rainbow in my face
so that I wanted to fall under the rain
to kiss the hands of an old woman to whom I gave my seat
to thank everyone for the fact that they exist
and at times even feel like smiling
I was grateful to young leaves that they were willing
to open up to the sun
to babies that they still
felt like coming into this world
to the old that they heroically
endure until the end
I was full of thanks
like a Sunday alms-box
I would have embraced death
if she'd stopped near by

gratitude is a scattered
homeless love



-- Anna Kamienska (1920-1986), Polish Roman Catholic poet, children’s book author, translator and writer, from Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska, edited and translated by Grazyna Drabik and David Curzon

Joy and Peace in Believing (Olney Hymns, XLVIII)

Sometimes a light surprises 

   The Christian while he sings; 

It is the Lord who rises 

    With healing on His wings; 

When comforts are declining, 

   He grants the soul again 

A season of clear shining, 

   To cheer it after rain. 

In holy contemplation 

    We sweetly then pursue 

The theme of God's salvation, 

    And find it ever new; 

Set free from present sorrow, 

    We cheerfully can say, 

E'en let the unknown to-morrow 

    Bring with it what it may! 

It can bring with it nothing, 

    But He will bear us through; 

Who gives the lilies clothing, 

    Will clothe His people too; 

Beneath the spreading heavens 

    No creature but is fed; 

And He who feeds the ravens 

    Will give His children bread. 

Though vine nor fig tree neither 

    Their wonted fruit shall bear, 

Though all the field should wither, 

    Nor flocks nor herds be there: 

Yet God the same abiding, 

    His praise shall tune my voice; 

For, while in Him confiding, 

    I cannot but rejoice.


-- William Cowper (1731-1800), English poet and Anglican hymn writer.

Cowper struggled with tragedy and depression his entire life; his friend John Newton suggested he begin writing hymns as therapy while Cowper was committed to an asylum.

Magic Words

In the very earliest time,

when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen–
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That's the way it was.


-- Anonymous Inuit; translated by Edward Field

The Coming

And God held in his hand

A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) Welsh poet and Anglican priest.

Every Riven Thing

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing he’s made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.


--Christian Wiman (1966- ), American poet, essayist, writer, former editor at Poetry magazine, and former Southern Baptist.

A Prayer That Will Be Answered

Lord let me suffer much

and then die

Let me walk through silence
and leave nothing behind not even fear

Make the world continue
let the ocean kiss the sand just as before

Let the grass stay green
so that frogs can hide in it

so that someone can bury his face in it
and sob out his love

Make the day rise brightly
as if there were no more pain

And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane
bumped by a bumblebee's head


-- Anna Kamienska (1920-1986), Polish poet, translator, children's book author, and convert to Roman Catholicism; translated from Polish by Thomas P. Krzeszowski & Desmond Graham

Even Bees Know What Zero Is

That’s enough memories, thank you, I’m stuffed.
I’ll need a memory vomitorium if this goes on.
How much attention can one man have?
Which reminds me: once I let the gas go on flowing
after my car was full and watched it spill its smell
(and potential hell) all over the ground around me.
I had to pay for that, and in currency quite other than attention.
I’ve had my fill of truth, too, come to think of it.
It’s all smeary in me, I’m like a waterlogged Bible:
enough with the aborted prophecies and garbled laws,
ancient texts holey as a teen’s jeans, begone begats!
Live long enough, and you can’t tell what’s resignation, what resolve.
That’s the bad news. The good news? You don’t give a shit.
My life. It’s like a library that closes for a long, long time
—a lifetime, some of  the disgrunts mutter—
and when it opens opens only to an improved confusion:
theology where poetry should be, psychology crammed with math.
And I’m all the regulars searching for their sections
and I’m the detonated disciplines too.
But most of all I’m the squat, smocked, bingo-winged woman
growing more granitic and less placable by the hour
as citizen after citizen blurts some version of
“What the hell!” or “I thought you’d all died!”
and the little stamp she stamps on the flyleaf
to tell you when your next generic mystery is due
that thing goes stamp right on my very soul.
Which is one more thing I’m done with, by the way,
the whole concept of soul. Even bees know what zero is,
scientists have learned, which means bees know my soul.
I’m done, I tell you, I’m due, I’m Oblivion’s datebook.
I’m a sunburned earthworm, a mongoose’s milk tooth,
a pleasure tariff, yesterday’s headcheese, spiritual gristle.
I’m the Apocalypse’s popsicle. I’m a licked Christian.

-- Christian Wiman (1966- ), American poet, essayist, and professor, former editor of Poetry magazine, cancer survivor, former Southern Baptist

Here is a link to an interview from 2018 with Krita Tippett at On Being.

Image: flowers blooming in the ruins of the Augustinian nunnery on Iona.

A host of things I take on trust

21. 

A host of things I take on trust: I take
The nightingales on trust, for few and far
Between those actual summer moments are
When I have heard what melody they make.
So chanced it once at Como on the Lake:
But all things, then, waxed musical; each star
Sang on its course, each breeze sang on its car,
All harmonies sang to senses wide awake.
All things in tune, myself not out of tune,
Those nightingales were nightingales indeed:
Yet truly an owl had satisfied my need,
And wrought a rapture underneath that moon,
Or simple sparrow chirping from a reed;
For June that night glowed like a doubled June.

-- Christina Rosetti (1830-1894), English Romantic poet, Anglo-Catholic supporter of the Oxford movement.

Churchgoing

The Lutherans sit stolidly in rows;
only their children feel the holy ghost
that makes them jerk and bobble and almost
destroys the pious atmosphere for those
whose reverence bows their backs as if in work.
The congregation sits, or stands to sing,
or chants the dusty creeds automaton.
Their voices drone like engines, on and on,
and they remain untouched by everything;
confession, praise, or likewise, giving thanks.
The organ that they saved years to afford
repeats the Sunday rhythms song by song,
slow lips recite the credo, smother yawns,
and ask forgiveness for being so bored.

I, too, am wavering on the edge of sleep,
and ask myself again why I have come
to probe the ruins of this dying cult.
I come bearing the cancer of my doubt
as superstitious suffering women come
to touch the magic hem of a saint's robe.

Yet this has served two centuries of men
as more than superstitious cant; they died
believing simply. Women, satisfied
that this was truth, were racked and burned with them
for empty words we moderns merely chant.

We sing a spiritual as the last song,
and we are moved by a peculiar grace
that settles a new aura on the place.
This simple melody, though sung all wrong,
captures exactly what I think is faith.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
That slaves should suffer in his agony!
That Christian, slave-owning hypocrisy
nevertheless was by these slaves ignored
as they pitied the poor body of Christ!
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble,
that they believe most, who so much have lost.
To be a Christian one must bear a cross.
I think belief is given to the simple
as recompense for what they do not know.

I sit alone, tormented in my heart
by fighting angels, one group black, one white.
The victory is uncertain, but tonight
I'll lie awake again, and try to start
finding the black way back to what we've lost.



-- Marilyn Nelson (1946- ), African American poet, translator, children's book author, and professor.

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.


Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
To which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends he will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.


--Robert Frost (1874-1963),  American poet and four time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

After the Quarrel

So we, who’ve supped the self-same cup,
To-night must lay our friendship by;
Your wrath has burned your judgment up,
Hot breath has blown the ashes high.
You say that you are wronged— ah, well,
I count that friendship poor, at best
A bauble, a mere bagatelle,
That cannot stand so slight a test.

I fain would still have been your friend,
And talked and laughed and loved with you;
But since it must, why, let it end;
The false but dies, ‘t is not the true.
So we are favored, you and I,
Who only want the living truth.
It was not good to nurse the lie;
‘Tis well it died in harmless youth.

I go from you to-night to sleep.
Why, what’s the odds? why should I grieve?
I have no fund of tears to weep
For happenings that undeceive.
The days shall come, the days shall go
Just as they came and went before.
The sun shall shine, the streams shall flow
Though you and I are friends no more.

And in the volume of my years,
Where all my thoughts and acts shall be,
The page whereon your name appears
Shall be forever sealed to me.
Not that I hate you over-much,
‘Tis less of hate than love defied;
Howe’er, our hands no more shall touch,
We’ll go our ways, the world is wide.

-- Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906), African American poet, novelist, and short-story writer.

Scripture reference: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9, Sixth Sunday after Epiphany A

Paul Robeson

That time

we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

--Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), African American poet, feminist, and author, Nobel Prize winner in Literature, and first African American woman appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.

Scripture reference: Matthew 5:21-37, 6th Sunday after Epiphany A

In Church

Often I try

To analyze the quality
Of its silences. Is this where God hides
From my searching? I have stopped to listen,
After the few people have gone,
To the air recomposing itself
For vigil. It has waited like this
Since the stones grouped themselves about it.
These are the hard ribs
Of a body that our prayers have failed
To animate. Shadows advance
From their corners to take possession
Of places the light held
For an hour. The bats resume
Their business. The uneasiness of the pews
Ceases. There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.


-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet, Anglican priest

Reconciliation

Some may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day
When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind
With lightning, you went from me, and I could find
Nothing to make a song about but kings,
Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things
That were like memories of you—but now
We'll out, for the world lives as long ago;
And while we're in our laughing, weeping fit,
Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit.
But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.

-- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Anglo-Irish poet, playwright, and mystic, widely considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Scripture reference: Matthew 5:21-37, 6th Sunday after Epiphany A

Ode to Salt

This salt
in the salt cellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me
but
it sings
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.
I shivered in those
solitudes
when I heard
the voice
of
the salt
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the nitrous
pampa
resounds:
a
broken
v oice,
a mournful
song.

In its caves
the salt moans, mountain
of buried light,
translucent cathedral,
crystal of the sea, oblivion
of the waves.
And then on every table
in the world,
salt,
we see your piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food.
Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste infinitude.

--Pablo Neruda (1914-1973), Chilean poet, politician, and diplomat, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Scripture reference: Matthew 5:13-20, 5th after Epiphany A

The Candlemas Procession

Lumen Ad revelationem gentium.
Look kindly, Jesus, where we come,
New Simeons, to kindle,
Each at Your infant sacrifice his own life’s candle.

And when Your flame turns into many tongues,
See how the One is multiplied, among us, hundreds!
And goes among the humble, and consoles our sinful kindred.

It is for this we come,
And, kneeling, each receive one flame:
Ad revelationem gentium.

Our lives, like candles, spell this simple symbol:

Weep like our bodily life, sweet work of bees,
Sweeten the world, with your slow sacrifice.
And this shall be our praise:
That by our glad expense, our Father’s will
Burned and consumed us for a parable.

Nor burn we now with brown and smoky flames, but bright
Until our sacrifice is done,
(By which not we, but You are known)
And then, returning to our Father, one by one,
Give back our lives like wise and waxen lights.


--Thomas Merton (1915-1968) American poet, memoirist, spiritual writer, and monastic

A Brigid's Girtle

Last time I wrote I wrote from a rustic table
Under magnolias in South Carolina
As blossoms fell on me, and a white gable
As clean-lined as the prow of a white liner

Bisected sunlight in the sunlit yard.
I was glad of the early heat and the first quiet
I'd had for weeks. I heard the mocking bird
And a delicious, articulate

Flight of small plinkings from a dulcimer
Like feminine rhymes migrating to the north
Where you faced the music and the ache of summer
And earth's foreknowledge gathered in the earth.

Now it's St Brigid's Day and the first snowdrop
In County Wicklow, and this a Brigid's Girdle
I'm plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop
(Like one of those old crinolines they'd trindle),

Twisted straw that's lifted in a circle
To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring
As strange and lightsome and traditional
As the motions you go through going through the thing.

--Seamus Heaney (1939-2013 ) Irish poet, playwright, translator, and teacher, Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, from The Spirit Level.

Today is the Feast of St. Brigid of Kildare.

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence, 

which knew it would inherit the earth 

before anybody said so. 

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds 

watching him from the birdhouse. 

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. 

The idea you carry close to your bosom 

is famous to your bosom. 

The boot is famous to the earth, 

more famous than the dress shoe, 

which is famous only to floors. 

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it 

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured. 

I want to be famous to shuffling men 

who smile while crossing streets, 

sticky children in grocery lines, 

famous as the one who smiled back. 

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, 

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, 

but because it never forgot what it could do.

--Naomi Shihab Nye (1952- ), Ferguson born Palestinian-Amercan poet and author.

We Shall Not Be Moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
The union is behind us
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We’re fighting for our freedom
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We’re fighting for our children
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We’ll building a mighty union
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Black and white together
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Young and old together
We shall not be moved

--Traditional African American spiritual and protest song

Scripture Reference: Psalm 112:1-9, (10), 5th Sunday after Epiphany A

The legendary Mavis Staples singing this song and telling how it plays a part in the Civil Rights Movement: