Whatever is Foreseen in Joy

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day,

Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.


--Wendell Berry (1935- ), American poet, essayist, agrarian, philosopher, novelist, and farmer, from This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems


Scriptural association: Mark 4: 26-34 (Proper 6B)

Prayer for Navigating Uncharted Waters

Lord, your light is the light we need

as we travel through life’s mystery and challenges.
Yours is that still small voice that leads us
to the place where we need to go.
Your presence is the company we need
as we navigate the path before us.
May your love be our North Star, guiding us
when we have no map to follow.
We place our trust in you, O Lord,
and we place our trust in one another
as together we seek to go
where you want us to be.
Amen.

– Sister Margaret Palliser, OP

Prayer Before Surgery

Loving God, I entrust myself to your care today.

Grant that I may be restored to Health as I may continue to have
Faith and trust in You, Alone.

Guide the medical team with wisdom and compassion and bless their hands
To be instruments of your healing.

Your compassion and unconditionally love have brought be this far,
I ask you, Lord, “to hold me in the palm of your hands;”and be renewed health. Amen.


– Sister Margaret Theresa Oettinger, OP

On the Mystery of the Incarnation

It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.


--Denise Levertov (1923-1997) esteemed Anglo-American poet, convert to Roman Catholicism, daughter of a Welsh mother and a Russian Jewish father turned priest in the Church of England, from The Stream & the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes.

Prayer for Children

Salish woman and grandchildren

One of my favorite pictures is that of a Native American Grandmother holding a small child tenderly in her lap. Her strong arms are around the child. Grandmother is a comforting presence; the child looks very content and secure.

Take a moment to recall the Jesus’ own words: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them!” [Mark 10: 14]

Jesus, as the mothers brought the children to you,
teach us how to lead the children to your lap.
Hold them tenderly.
Let them pour out their hearts and souls to you.
Bring them love, joy, laughter.
Free them from any kind of hurts.
Embrace them warmly.
Let them be in a holy communion with you.
Amen.

– Sister Dolores Shortal, OP (Dominican Sisters of Sparkill)

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)

The Lonely Eagles

for Daniel “Chappie” James, General USAF
and for the 332d Fighter Group

Being black in America

was the Original Catch,

so no one was surprised

by 22:

The segregated airstrips,

separate camps.

They did the jobs

they’d been trained to do.

 

Black ground crews kept them in the air;

black flight surgeons kept them alive;

the whole Group removed their headgear

when another pilot died.

 

They were known by their names:

“Ace” and “Lucky,”

“Sky-hawk Johnny,” “Mr. Death.”

And by their positions and planes.

Red Leader to Yellow Wing-man,

do you copy?

 

If you could find a fresh egg

you bought it and hid it

in your dopp-kit or your boot

until you could eat it alone.

On the night before a mission

you gave a buddy

your hiding-places

as solemnly

as a man dictating

his will.

There’s a chocolate bar

in my Bible;

my whiskey bottle

is inside my bedroll.

 

In beat-up Flying Tigers

that had seen action in Burma,

they shot down three German jets.

They were the only outfit

in the American Air Corps

to sink a destroyer

with fighter planes.

Fighter planes with names

like “By Request.”

Sometimes the radios

didn’t even work.

 

They called themselves

“Hell from Heaven.”

This Spookwaffe.

My father’s old friends.

 

It was always

maximum effort:

A whole squadron

of brother-men

raced across the tarmac

and mounted their planes.

 

            My tent-mate was a guy named Starks.

            The funny thing about me and Starks

            was that my air mattress leaked,

            and Starks’ didn’t.

            Every time we went up,

            I gave my mattress to Starks

            and put his on my cot.

 

            One day we were strafing a train.

            Strafing’s bad news:

            you have to fly so low and slow

            you’re a pretty clear target.

            My other wing-man and I

            exhausted our ammunition and got out.

            I recognized Starks

            by his red tail

            and his rudder’s trim-tabs.

            He couldn’t pull up his nose.

            He dived into the train

            and bought the farm.

 

            I found his chocolate,

            three eggs, and a full fifth

            of his hoarded-up whiskey.

            I used his mattress

            for the rest of my tour.

 

            It still bothers me, sometimes:

            I was sleeping

            on his breath.

-- Marilyn Nelson (1946- ), African American poet, translator, children’s book author, three-time finalist for the National Book Award, and former poet laureate of Connecticut

Minor Miracle

Which reminds me of another knock-on-wood
memory. I was cycling with a male friend,
through a small midwestern town. We came to a 4-way
stop and stopped, chatting. As we started again,
a rusty old pick-up truck, ignoring the stop sign,
hurricaned past scant inches from our front wheels.
My partner called, “Hey, that was a 4-way stop!”
The truck driver, stringy blond hair a long fringe
under his brand-name beer cap, looked back and yelled,
              “You fucking niggers!”
And sped off.
My friend and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
We remounted our bikes and headed out of town.
We were pedaling through a clear blue afternoon
between two fields of almost-ripened wheat
bordered by cornflowers and Queen Anne’s lace
when we heard an unmuffled motor, a honk-honking.
We stopped, closed ranks, made fists.
It was the same truck. It pulled over.
A tall, very much in shape young white guy slid out:
greasy jeans, homemade finger tattoos, probably
a Marine Corps boot-camp footlockerful
of martial arts techniques.

“What did you say back there!” he shouted.
My friend said, “I said it was a 4-way stop.
You went through it.”
“And what did I say?” the white guy asked.
“You said: ‘You fucking niggers.’”
The afternoon froze.

“Well,” said the white guy,
shoving his hands into his pockets
and pushing dirt around with the pointed toe of his boot,
“I just want to say I’m sorry.”
He climbed back into his truck
and drove away.


--Marilyn Nelson, (1946- ), African American poet, translator, children’s book author, three-time finalist for the National Book Award, and former poet laureate of Connecticut, from Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems, from Fields of zPraise: New and Selected Poems, 1994.

A Terrible Beauty

                             April is the cruelest month…
                             -- T. S. ELIOT

If you happen to miss this year’s
Cruelest Month Competition,
it began with all twelve contestants
taking the stage together
in the order of the calendar year,
each dressed in outfits
that saying of their personalities—
March windblown and wet with rain,
October resplendent in red and orange.

Many wondered why April, a perennial loser,
would even bother to show up,
always smiling, daffodils
embroidered on her bodice.
Some blamed it on a poem she'd read somewhere.

Others followed her early elimination—
August with zinc slathered on her nose,
December looking like the Mother of God.
It must be said that no one was surprised
when the tuxedoed man with a microphone
finally announced this year's winner,
the same as every year since its beginning.

Even though she'd shivered
during the swimsuit part
and stumbled when asked
how she planned to change the world,
February was the obvious choice.
I mean the Super Bowl's over by then
and spring's a mile away.
What could be crueler? As one guy put it.
And that was about it, except for the coronation.

There she stood, the only month on the stage,
crying a few chilly tears,
a thin smile frozen on her lips.
Then she bent her knees a little
So as to be less tall,
and some official placed on her head
her latest dripping, silvery crown of ice.

-- Billy Collins (1941- ), American poet, former poet laureate of the US, and teacher