SHRIVEN

Childhood Saturday nights found us
in the cloistered dark of the old church
dim lit to save on bills, but menacing still,
with gothic shadows in every corner
fit for scenes from horror on a screen.

We'd line up by fluted columns
that reached to a shadowed ceiling
free of saints, and waited to open up
the spirits vein and bleed out all
our sad litanies of petty crime.

The old priest, half deaf, drew crowds,
making us whole again for the cost
of three mumbled Hail Marys
as we knelt in the dark pews
and scanned the hidden corners for a sign.

Beneath the pews, along the floor,
ran pipes for a heating system old as sin,
and on cold nights they'd hiss and moan,
then commenced the clanging like lost souls
till the whole church trembled with the noise.

In this fit setting, at eight I shuddered,
at thirteen grumbled, and at sixteen
merely mourned the sad irony
beneath the frozen agonies of
a rough cut, varnished Christ.

Years later, that old apartment with
two narrow rooms, high ceilinged,
had ancient radiators with chipped paint
flecks of rust, and constant minor leaks –
late on cold nights, they sang,

saying their raucous organ song, rumbling,
banging, raising all of hell or at least
the demons hidden in their dark,
meandering pipes -- the super would come,
but only after endless calls.

Old and half-deaf, he’d wrench the joints,
And sound his rasping, high pitched laugh
that turned to coughing soon enough –
“had to bleed the bastards-- water leaks
out and air gets in -- got to bleed it out.”

So we went, many nights, till I moved on,
no longer assailed by the angry pipes, but
reassured by the subtle flow of forced air
who soft breath brings near silence –
but in silence, then, what echoes can remain?

Lying awake in the too quiet dark,
regretting the loss song of ancient pipes,
I wonder if this be peace or merely absence.
Where is the loud spirit that once trembled nights,
and who now can bleed away what's trapped within?

--Vincent Casaregola, from Dappled Things, Sts. Peter and Paul 2020- Volume 15, Issue 3

Prayer Before Surgery

 O God the Comfort of Sufferers, we ask that You bless Your servant with peace and calm as s/he is going through this operation. Give the surgeon and the surgical staff skill and wisdom. May the procedure successfully treat the problem, and may You bless Your servant with swift recovery and full healing. Great are You in might and power! Through Him, who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

found here: https://connectusfund.org/16-good-episcopal-prayers-for-the-sick 

Advent

Wind whistling, as it does 
in winter, and I think 
nothing of it until

it snaps a shutter off
her bedroom window, spins
it over the roof and down

to crash on the deck in back,
like something out of Oz.
We look up, stunned—then glad

to be safe and have a story,
characters in a fable
we only half-believe.

Look, in my surprise
I somehow split a wall,
the last one in the house

we’re making of gingerbread.
We’ll have to improvise:
prop the two halves forward

like an open double door
and with a tube of icing
cement them to the floor.

Five days until Christmas, 
and the house cannot be closed.
When she peers into the cold

interior we’ve exposed,
she half-expects to find
three magi in the manger,

a mother and her child.
She half-expects to read
on tablets of gingerbread

a line or two of Scripture, 
 as she has every morning
inside a dated shutter

on her Advent calendar.
She takes it from the mantel
and coaxes one fingertip

under the perforation,
as if her future hinges
on not tearing off the flap

under which a thumbnail picture
by Raphael or Giorgione,
Hans Memling or David

of apses, niches, archways,
cradles a smaller scene
of a mother and her child,

of the lidded jewel-box
of Mary’s downcast eyes.
Flee into Egypt, cries

the angel of the Lord
to Joseph in a dream,
for Herod will seek the young

child to destroy him. While
she works to tile the roof
with shingled peppermints,

I wash my sugared hands
and step out to the deck
to lug the shutter in,

a page torn from a book
still blank for the two of us,
a mother and her child.

--Mary Jo Salter (1954- ),  American poet, editor of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, and essayist,  from Open Shutters: Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003)

II (Another Sunday morning comes)

Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, or the finest blooms
Of time return, and where no path

Is worn but wears its makers out
At last, and disappears in leaves
Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut
Fills and levels; here nothing grieves

In the risen season. Past life
Lives in the living. Resurrection
Is in the way each maple leaf
Commemorates its kind, by connection

Outreaching understanding. What rises
Rises into comprehension
And beyond. Even falling raises
In praise of light. What is begun 

Is unfinished. And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells,

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

--Wendell Berry (1934- ), American farmer, poet, essayist, and agrarian, from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997

God Bless the Broken Road

I set out on a narrow way many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you

That every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

I think about the years I spent just passin' through
I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you
But you just smile and take my hand
You've been there, you understand
It's all part of a grander plan that is coming true
Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

And now I'm just a-rollin' home
Into my lover's arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you.


--Marcus Hummon, Jeff Hanna, and Bobby Boyd, recorded by Rascal Flatts

Scripture references: Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:3-4

The Path

RUNNING along a bank, a parapet 

That saves from the precipitous wood below
The level road, there is a path. It serves
Children for looking down the long smooth steep,
Between the legs of beech and yew, to where
A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women
Content themselves with the road and what they see
Over the bank, and what the children tell.
The path, winding like silver, trickles on,
Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss
That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk
With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.
The children wear it. They have flattened the bank
On top, and silvered it between the moss
With the current of their feet, year after year.
But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.
To see a child is rare there, and the eye
Has but the road, the wood that overhangs
And underyawns it, and the path that looks
As if it led on to some legendary
Or fancied place where men have wished to go
And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.

-- Edward Thomas (1878-1917), British writer, poet, and critic 

Relevant scripture: Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:2-3, Advent 2B

Closed Path

I thought that my voyage had come to its end 

at the last limit of my power,---

that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.

--Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Bengali philosopher, mystic, painter, composer, and poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1913.

Scripture references: Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:2-3 (Advent 2B)

Psalm 102

              O Lord, my praying hear;
              Lord, let my cry come to thine ear.
Hide not thy face away,
       But haste, and answer me,
In this my most, most miserable day,
       Wherein I pray and cry to thee.

              My days as smoke are past;
              My bones as flaming fuel waste,
Mown down in me, alas.
       With scythe of sharpest pain.
My heart is withered like the wounded grass;
       My stomach doth all food disdain.

              So lean my woes me leave,
              That to my flesh my bones do cleave;
And so I bray and howl,
       As use to howl and bray
The lonely pelican and desert owl,
       Like whom I languish long the day.

              I languish so the day,
              The night in watch I waste away;
Right as the sparrow sits,
       Bereft of spouse, or son,
Which irked alone with dolor’s deadly fits
       To company will not be won.

              As day to day succeeds,
              So shame on shame to me proceeds
From them that do me hate,
       Who of my wrack so boast,
That wishing ill, they wish but my estate,
       Yet think they wish of ills the most.

              Therefore my bread is clay;
              Therefore my tears my wine allay.
For how else should it be,
       Sith thou still angry art,
And seem’st for naught to have advanced me,
       But me advanced to subvert?

              The sun of my life-days
              Inclines to west with falling rays,
And I as hay am dried,
       While yet in steadfast seat
Eternal thou eternally dost bide,
       Thy memory no years can fret.

              Oh, then at length arise;
              On Zion cast thy mercy’s eyes.
Now is the time that thou
       To mercy shouldst incline
Concerning her: O Lord, the time is now
       Thyself for mercy didst assign.

              Thy servants wait the day
              When she, who like a carcass lay
Stretched forth in ruin’s bier,
       Shall so arise and live,
The nations all Jehova’s name shall fear,
       All kings to thee shall glory give.

              Because thou hast anew
              Made Zion stand, restored to view
Thy glorious presence there,
       Because thou hast, I say,
Beheld our woes and not refused to hear
       What wretched we did plaining pray,

              This of record shall bide
              To this and every age beside.
And they commend thee shall
       Whom thou anew shall make,
That from the prospect of thy heav’nly hall
       Thy eye of earth survey did take,

              Heark’ning to prisoners’ groans,
              And setting free condemned ones,
That they, when nations come,
       And realms to serve the Lord,
In Zion and in Salem might become
       Fit means his honor to record.

              But what is this if I
              In the mid way should fall and die?
My God, to thee I pray,
       Who canst my prayer give.
Turn not to night the noontide of my day,
       Since endless thou dost ageless live.

              The earth, the heaven stands
              Once founded, formed by thy hands:
They perish, thou shalt bide;
       They old, as clothes shall wear,
Till changing still, full change shall them betide,
       Unclothed of all the clothes they bear.

              But thou art one, still one:
              Time interest in thee hath none.
Then hope, who godly be,
       Or come of godly race:
Endless your bliss, as never ending he,
       His presence your unchanged place.

--Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621), Elizabethan poet and patron, sister of Sir Philip Sidney, from The Sidneian Psalms, 1599.

Man's Short Life and Foolish Ambition

In gardens sweet each flower mark did I,
How they did spring, bud, blow, wither and die.

With that, contemplating of man's short stay,
Saw man like to those flowers pass away.

Yet built he houses, thick and strong and high,
As if he'd live to all Eternity.

Hoards up a mass of wealth, yet cannot fill
His empty mind, but covet will he still.

To gain or keep, such falsehood will he use!
Wrong, right or truth—no base ways will refuse.

I would not blame him could he death out keep,
Or ease his pains or be secure of sleep:

Or buy Heaven's mansions—like the gods become,
And with his gold rule stars and moon and sun:

Command the winds to blow, seas to obey,
Level their waves and make their breezes stay.

But he no power hath unless to die,
And care in life is only misery.

This care is but a word, an empty sound,
Wherein there is no soul nor substance found;

Yet as his heir he makes it to inherit,
And all he has he leaves unto this spirit.

To get this Child of Fame and this bare word,
He fears no dangers, neither fire nor sword:

All horrid pains and death he will endure,
Or any thing can he but fame procure.

O man, O man, what high ambition grows
Within his brain, and yet how low he goes!

To be contented only with a sound,
Wherein is neither peace nor life nor body found.

--Duchess of Newcastle Margaret Cavendish (1623-1653), Elizabethan poet, from The Cavalier and His Lady

I (I go among trees and sit still)

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
what I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

--Wendell Berry (1934- ), American farmer, poet, essayist, and agrarian, from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997