Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

Did you ever understand this?

If my spirit was poor, how could I enter heaven?
Was I depressed?
Understanding editing,
I see how a comma, removed or inserted
with careful plan,
can change everything.
I was reminded of this
when a poor young man
in Tunisia
desperate to live
and humiliated for trying
set himself ablaze;
I felt uncomfortably warm
as if scalded by his shame.
I do not have to sell vegetables from a cart as he did
or live in narrow rooms too small for spacious thought;
and, at this late date,
I do not worry that someone will
remove every single opportunity
for me to thrive.
Still, I am connected to, inseparable from,
this young man.
Blessed are the poor, in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus. (Commas restored) .
Jesus was as usual talking about solidarity: about how we join with others
and, in spirit, feel the world, and suffering, the same as them.
This is the kingdom of owning the other as self, the self as other;
that transforms grief into
peace and delight.
I, and you, might enter the heaven
of right here
through this door.
In this spirit, knowing we are blessed,
we might remain poor.

--Alice Walker (1944- ) African American novelist, poet, and activist.

This poem refers to the story of Mohammed Bouazizi, who on December 17, 2010 set himself on fire in response to constant government harassment, and act of protest that helped spark the Arab Spring.

Scripture Reference: Matthew 5:1-12

Beatitudes

1.
My child wants to know if the mountains really cowered.
“How do you know when a sea or a river is afraid?
How do you know when the sky is thinking yes or no?

And why did Adam say yes—Did he know that
all the other creatures refused? Was he arrogant
or just ignorant? Was he God’s last choice?”

2.
“Did you really have a party the day the dictator died?
And you had a cake decorated with all the flags?
Did you think his death will fix everything?

Why did we spend all that time there?
Why couldn’t we just stay here?
Isn’t this our country too?

And all these people fleeing and drowning,
what are they hoping for? Whose fault is it?
How long must we wait for things to improve?”

3.
She speaks to me in our language
in front of her friends, to share a secret,
or—cool and beaming—to show off.

I wonder how long it will last, this pride,
this intimacy. Sometimes she puts her arm
next to mine and tells me I have the lighter skin.

“Why are you doing this,” I ask.
But she doesn’t point to the flag
or say, “It’s the way of the world.”

Instead she tells me not to worry, that she is “the most
kid kid in my class, the least mature one, Baba!”
Not all kinds of wisdom console, I tell her.

Then I begin to think of words she’ll soon hear
that can make her wish she wasn’t who she is.
Lead me to virtue, O love, through the smoke of despair.

4.
“Let’s walk through the woods,” she tells me.
“Let’s walk by the rocky shore at sunrise.”
“Let’s walk through the clover fields at noon.”

In the rainforest she is silent, mesmerized.
She’d never prayed—we never taught her—
but she seemed to then, eyes alert with joy.

She points to a chameleon the size of a beetle,
teaches me the names of flowers and trees,
insects we can eat if we’re ever lost here.

“I’m teaching you how to entrust the world
to me,” she says. “You don’t have to live
forever to shield me from it.”

--Khaled Mattawa (1964- ), Libyan-born American poet and translator or Arabic poetry.

Scriptural reference: Matthew 5:1-12, 4 Epiphany A

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)

All Saints' and All Souls'- A Last Beatitude

And blessed are the ones we overlook; 
The faithful servers on the coffee rota, 
The ones who hold no candle, bell, or book 
But keep the books and tally up the quota, 
The gentle souls who come to ‘do the flowers,’ 
The quiet ones who organize the fete, 
Church sitters who give up their weekday hours, 
Doorkeepers who may open heaven’s gate. 
God knows the depths that often go unspoken 
Amongst the shy, the quiet, and the kind, 
Or the slow healing of a heart long broken, 
Placing each flower so for a year’s mind. 
Invisible on earth, without a voice, 
In heaven their angels glory and rejoice.

--Malcolm Guite, (1957- ) Anglican priest, poet, singer-songwriter, and philosopher

Happiness

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful hours
of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
      It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens
 to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.


-- Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), American poet and translator, from The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices From the Robert Frost Place

Related Scripture: Matthew 5:1-2, Beatitudes, Psalm 1

Beatitudes

Grant, O Lord, that having put aside every weight and the sins that do so easily beset us; and every motion both of flesh and spirit which is contrary to the will of Your holiness:

We may be meek, that so we may inherit the earth:
May be peacemakers, that so we may be called children of God:
May be merciful, that so we may obtain mercy:
May be poor in spirit, that so we may have part in the kingdom of heaven:
May be pure in heart, that so we may see God:
May hunger and thirst after righteousness, that so we may be filled:
May mourn, that so we may be comforted:
And may be prepared for persecutions and reproaches for righteousness’ sake.
That so our reward may be in heaven. 

-- Launcelot Andrewes (1555-1626), English bishop, theologian, and scholar whose feast day is today, in Evelyn Underhill, Evelyn Underhill's Prayer Book.



Image: Cosimo Roselli, The Sermon on the Mount, fresco in the Sistine Chapel, 1481-1482

Love

You have said, O Lord:

blest are the pure in heart,

for they shall see You.

O sight to be wished, desired and longed for;

because once to have seen You

is to have learnt all things.

Nothing can bring us to this sight but love.

But what love must it be?

Not a sensible love or a childish love,

a love that seeks itself more than the beloved.

It must be an ardent love,

a constant love:

not worn out with labours,

not daunted with any difficulties.

For the soul that has set her whole love and desire on You

shall never find any true satisfaction,

but only in You.

--Dame Gertrude More (1606-1633) English Benedictine nun and founder of Stanbrook Abbey, collected by Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), in Evelyn Underhill's Prayer Book.