Fishing in the Keep of Silence

There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in the massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the egrets
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: there are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.

--Linda Gregg (1942-2019), American poet, from All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems, 2008

Scripture reference: Luke 5:1-11, 5th Sunday after Epiphany C

Once Blessed

So that I stopped
there
and looked
into the waters
seeing not only
my reflected face
but the great sky
that framed
my lonely figure
and after a moment
I lifted my hands
and then my eyes
and I allowed myself
to be astonished
by the great
everywhere
calling to me
like an old
and unspoken
invitation,
made new
by the sun
and the spring,
and the cloud
and the light,
like something
both
calling to me
and radiating
from where I stood,
as if I could
understand
everything
I had been given
and everything ever
taken from me,
as if I could be
everything I have ever
learned
and everything
I could ever know,
as if I knew
both the way I had come
and, secretly,
the way
underneath
I was still
promised to go,
brought together,
like this, with the
unyielding ground
and the symmetry
of the moving sky,
caught in still waters.

Someone I have been,
and someone
I am just,
about to become,
something I am
and will be forever,
the sheer generosity
of being loved
through loving:
the miracle reflection
of a twice blessed life.

-- David Whyte (1955- ), Anglo Irish poet and philosopher, from The Bell and the Blackbird, 2019.

The Blessed

Cumhal called out, bending his head,
Till Dathi came and stood,
With a blink in his eyes, at the cave-mouth,
Between the wind and the wood.

And Cumhal said, bending his knees,
‘I have come by the windy way
To gather the half of your blessedness
And learn to pray when you pray.

I can bring you salmon out of the streams
And heron out of the skies.’
But Dathi folded his hands and smiled
With the secrets of God in his eyes.

And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke
All manner of blessed souls,
Women and children, young men with books,
And old men with croziers and stoles.

‘Praise God and God’s Mother, Dathi said,
‘For God and God’s Mother have sent
The blessedest souls that walk in the world
To fill your heart with content.’

‘And which is the blessedest,’ Cumhal said,
‘Where all are comely and good?
Is it these that with golden thuribles
Are singing about the wood?’

‘My eyes are blinking,’ Dathi said,
‘With the secrets of God half blind,
But I can see where the wind goes
And follow the way of the wind;

‘And blessedness goes where the wind goes,
And when it is gone we are dead;
I see the blessedest soul in the world
And he nods a drunken head.

‘O blessedness comes in the night and the day
And whither the wise heart knows;
And one has seen in the redness of wine
The Incorruptible Rose,

‘That drowsily drops faint leaves on him
And the sweetness of desire,
While time and the world are ebbing away
In twilights of dew and of fire.

--William Butler Yeats, (1865-1939) Irish poet and dramatist

Scripture Reference: Luke 6:17-26 (The Sermon on the Plain and Beatitudes) Epiphany 6C

Image: The Keshcorran Caves in County Sligo, which were thought to be a passage to the underworld and associated with the mythical hero and warrior Finn MacCool (Fiann Mac Cumhaill)

Cana, or Not a Perfect Carpenter

"They have no wine."-- John 2:3 
"Like us in all things but sin."-- Hebrews 4:15 

It had to come from somewhere. Expectations 
have histories. Out of the blue one does 
not say, “They have no wine,” as though 
remarking on the gathering of the clouds, or how 
late the spring this year. Surely she knew 
before she came. Had he bent more 
than nails, as he hammered the oak plank, 
cut too short for the table top,

and turning to be sure the door was closed, 
had he, in a stolen moment, lengthen
it an inch or two, a quick 
impatient wonder to cover his mistake?

But through the lattice, had she seen, 
smiled and understood. Had she asked 
him to build a porch with beams from Lebanon, 
where she could catch the breeze, watch

the sun go down? Then as the hard 
wood rafters began to drop, 
did he twist the law of gravity, put 
a kink in the path of falling timbers?

And did she duck – and marvel?

-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell, OSB (1921- ), American monk, poet, and theologian at St. John's Abbey.

Relevant Scripture, John 2:1-11, 2nd after Epiphany C