Prayer for Love and Light

O Lord,
in the name of Jesus Christ your Son our God,
give us that love which can never cease,
that will kindle our lamps but not extinguish them,
that they may burn in us and enlighten others.

O Christ, our dearest Savior,
kindle our lamps,
that they may evermore shine in your temple,
that they may receive unquenchable light from you
that will enlighten our darkness,
and lessen the darkness of the world.

Lord Jesus, we pray,
give your light to our lamps,
that in its light
the most holy place may be revealed to us
in which you dwell as the Eternal Priest,
that we may always see you,
desire you, look on you in love,
and long after you;
for your sake. 

Amen.


-- collect of the early Church, sixth century

The Feathers, the Bones, and the Shells

The sound of my heart is ancient and true
And it sings like a thousand bells
For sorrow and grace, for my love of you
The Feathers, the Bones and the Shells

I try to believe wherever you are
There's a sky and a sea of blue
And someone you trust
Whose sheltering arms

Have finally comforted you
The touch of you hand still lives in my skin
Like a shadow I can't embrace
Wherever it ends is where it begins
Without ever leaving a trace

So you live in me and I live in you
And the rest is for love to tell
That nothing escapes
The wind blowing through
The Feathers, the Bones and the Shells

-- Beth Nielsen Chapman and Joe Henry, from Beth's album Deeper Still 

A Prayer for Spiritual Illumination

Hear us,
never-fading Light, Lord our God,
our only Light, Fountain of light,
Light of your angels,
thrones, dominions, principalities, powers,
and of all intelligent beings.

You created the light of your saints.

May our souls be your lamps,
kindled and enlightened by you.

May they shine and burn with the truth,
and never go out in darkness and ashes.

May we be your house,
shining from you, shining in you.

May we shine without fail.
May we ever worship you.

In you may we be kindled and not be extinguished.

Being filled with the splendor
of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
may we shine forth inwardly.
May the gloom of sins be cleared away,
and the light of constant faith abide within us.

--adapted from the Mozarabic Sacramentary, 7th Century Spain/Portugal

The Truth the Dead Know

For my mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my father, born February 1900, died June 1959


Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one’s alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

--Anne Sexton (1928-1974), American Confessional poet and professor who struggled with mental illness and childhood abuse. She took her life at age 46.

Gossip

She always asks you, How is so-and-so?
--Her wary eyes as self-contained as beads.
She takes each anecdote and makes it grow,
or keeps it like a farmer hoarding seeds.
Conscious of being one who never fell,
Who never laid a single brick on sand,
She sees her neighbor stumbling to hell
And points a little plump triumphant hand.
When one is middle-aged and well-to-do
And free of care, existence might be flat
If fascinating troubles did not brew
In other lives, to taste in private chat
Before the cozy fire-- a cup of tea
Precarious on a well-toasted knee.


---Elizabeth Bohm, from Poetry magazine, February 1941

Putting in the Seed

You come to fetch me from my work to-night 

When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

-- Robert Frost (1874-1963) poet, teacher, farmer and US Poet Laureate 1959-1960 and four time Pulitzer Prize winner.

Scripture reference: Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43, Proper 11A

Sowing

In the stilled place that once was a road going down
From the town to the river, and where the lives of marriages grew
a house, cistern and barn, flowers, the tilted stone of borders,
and the deeds of their lives ran to neglect, and honeysuckle
and then the fire overgrew it all, I walk heavy
with seed, spreading on the cleared hill the beginnings
of green, clover and grass to be pasture. Between
history’s death upon the place and the trees that would have come
I claim, and act, and am mingled in the fate of the world.

-- Wendell Berry (1934- ), American poet, teacher, novelist, agrarian, farmer, and activist

Scripture Reference:  Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43, Proper 11A

Sowing the Seed

Sowing the seed,
my hand is one with the earth.

Wanting the seed to grow,

my mind is one with the light.

Hoeing the crop,
my hands are one with the rain.

Having cared for the plants, 

my mind is one with the air.

Hungry and trusting,
my mind is one with the earth.

Eating the fruit,
my body is one with the earth.

-- Wendell Berry (1934- ), American poet, teacher, novelist, agrarian, farmer, and activist

Scripture Reference:  Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43, Proper 11A

Elegy

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

-Chidiock Tichborne 1558-1586 (written on the even of his execution during the reign of Elizabeth I)

Scripture Reference: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43,  Proper 11 A

Prayer: Our Small Difference

We may not be able to confront queens,
or challenge presidents;
We may not have the capacity to divert resources,
or uplift communities;
We may not have the voice to silence the noise of war,
or the words to negotiate peace between armies;
But, as we follow you, O Christ, we are able to do something.

And so, we pray that you would inspire us
to commit to and act on
the small difference we can make:
May we bring peace
through small acts of gentleness
and reconciliation;
May we bring wealth
through small contributions
and collaborations;
May we bring safety
through small acts of consideration
and acceptance;
May we bring wholeness
through small acts of care
and service.

And in the small ways, O God,
may our small difference make a big contribution
to your saving work in our world.


Amen.


-- written by John van de Laar. From Sacredise.com 

July 5, 1940

Nought that I would give today
Would half compare
With the long-treasured riches that somewhere
In the deep heart are stored.
Cloud and the moon and mist and the whole
Hoard of frail, white-bubbling stars,
And the cool blessing,
Like moth or wind caressing,
Of the fair, fresh rain-dipped flowers;
And all the spells of the sea, and the new green
Of moss and fern and bracken
Before their youth is stricken;
The thoughts of the trees at eventide, the hush
In the dark corn at morning,
And the wish
In your own heart still but dawning –
All of these,
A soft weight on your hands,
I would give now;
And lastly myself made clean
And white as the wave-washed sand,
If I knew how.


-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) Anglican priest and Welsh poet, from Uncollected Poems.

The Gossips

The vulturine necks stretch out; the mean eyes bunch, 

Float over hedges, witch-like, branch after branch,
Droop down from grim windows; lust to Lynch;

Or narrow to a dark reptilian stare,
Glide, poison-fanged, from bridge tea to the store.
The victim walks, his curdled spine aware.

Whatever could this bumbling man have done
That these cold venomous eyes should merge as one,
Freeze and transfix him like an evil sun?


--Theodore Roethke (1908-1963),  American poet and teacher

A Hymn to Friendship

Somehow we manage it: to like our friends,

to tolerate not only their little ways
but their huge neuroses, their monumental oddness:
"Oh, well," we smile, "it's one of his funny days."

Families, of course, are traditionally awful:
embarrassing parents, ghastly brothers, mad aunts
provide a useful training-ground to prepare us
for the pseudo-relations we acquire by chance.

Why them, though? Why not the woman in the library
(grey hair, big mouth) who reminds us so of J?
Or the one on Budgen's delicatessen counter
(shy smile, big nose) who strongly resembles K?

—Just as the stout, untidy gent on the train
reading the Mail on Sunday through pebble specs
could, with somewhat sparser hair and a change
of reading-matter, be our good friend X.

True, he isn't; they aren't; but why does it matter?
Wouldn't they do as well as the friends we made
in the casual past, by being at school with them,
or living nextdoor, or learning the same trade?

Well, no, they wouldn't. Imagine sharing a tent
with one of these look-alikes, and finding she snored:
no go. Or listening for days on end while she dithered
about her appalling marriage: we'd be bored.

Do we feel at all inclined to lend them money?
Or travel across a continent to stay
for a weekend with them? Or see them through an abortion,
a divorce, a gruelling court-case? No way.

Let one of these imposters desert his wife
for a twenty-year-old, then rave all night about
her sensitivity and her gleaming thighs,
while guzzling all our whiskey: we'd boot him out.

And as for us, could we ring them up at midnight
when our man walked out on us, or our roof fell in?
Would they offer to pay our fare across the Atlantic
to visit them? The chances are pretty thin.

Would they forgive us not admiring their novel,
or saying we couldn't really take to their child,
or confessing that years ago we went to bed
with their husband? No, they wouldn't: they'd go wild.

Some things kindly strangers will put up with,
but we need to know exactly what they are:
it's OK to break a glass, if we replace it,
but we mustn't let our kids be sick in their car.

Safer to stick with people who remember
how we ourselves, when we and they were nineteen,
threw up towards the end of a student party
on ethyl alcohol punch and methedrine.

In some ways we've improved since them. In others
(we glance at the heavy jowls and thinning hair,
hoping we're slightly better preserved than they are)
at least it's a deterioration we share.

It can't be true to say that we chose our friends,
or surely we'd have gone for a different lot,
while they, confronted with us, might well have decided
that since it was up to them they'd rather not.

But something keeps us hooked, now we're together,
a link we're not so daft as to disparage—
nearly as strong as blood-relationship
and far more permanent, thank God, than marriage.

--Fleur Adcock (1934- ), New Zealand-born poet, lecturer, librarian, translator, and commentator, from Poems 1960-2000.

Celtic Blessing at Night

I lay my head to rest,

and in doing so,
lay at your feet
the faces I have seen,
the voices I have heard,
the words I have spoken,
the hands I have shaken,
the service I have given,
the joys I have shared,
the sorrows revealed,
I lay them at your feet,
and in doing so
lay my head to rest.

--From the Faith and Worship blog

Inniskeen Road: July Evening

The bicycles go by in twos and threes -

There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn tonight, 

And there's the half-talk code of mysteries 

And the wink-and-elbow language of delight. 

Half-past eight and there is not a spot 

Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown 

That might turn out a man or woman, not 

A footfall tapping secrecies of stone. 

I have what every poet hates in spite 

Of all the solemn talk of contemplation. 

Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight 

Of being king and government and nation. 

A road, a mile of kingdom. I am king 

Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.

-- Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) Irish poet and novelist