Monday Prayers (For Beginnings)

At every beginning
bless our dreaming
and our doing.

This day (week, month, year) lies before us,
full of the mundane and the miraculous,
the known and the unknown.

Be the breath we take before each step.
Be the source from which we draw strength.
Be the end toward which we direct our hope.

Open our eyes to all that is around us.
Open our ears to the song the soul yearns to sing.
Open our hearts to the love that lives through us,
Open our hands to the task the moment requires.

Let us do the one thing,
the thing before us,
as if all creation
and out very life
depend upon it,

as if You are bent over,
watching and listening
and willing us
to do it well.

--Carla A. Grosch-Miller,  from Psalms Redux: Poems and Prayers, 2017

a man who had fallen among thieves

a man who had fallen among thieves 
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and leal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise

one hand did nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the mute trouserfly confessed
a button solemnly inert.

Brushing from whom the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars.

--e. e. cummings (1894-1962), American poet, painter, and playwright



Scriptural Reference: Luke 10:25-37 (Proper 10C)

Image: Vincent Van Gogh, The Good Samaritan

Connection

A hawk touches down
                  the humming earth before Miami,
                                                                         Oklahoma.
              You old Shawnee, I think
                                                  of your rugged ways
                      the slick-floored bars and whiskey
                        sour nights when the softer heart
                                                                             comes apart.
The Spokane you roam isn't City of the Angels
          but another kind of wilderness.
              You speed in a Ford truck and it's five
                  in the morning, the sun and dogs
                                                                      only ones up
and you go home to red earth
                                            when you see a hawk
               crossing wires

                                       touching down.

-- Joy Harjo (1951- ), Muscogee (Creek) American, US Poet Laureate 2019- . musician and artist, from She Had Some Horses, 1983.

Home

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbours running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave home

when home won't let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it's not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets

sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn't be going back.

you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

no one burns their palms

under trains

beneath carriages

no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck

feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled

means something more than journey.

no one crawls under fences

no one wants to be beaten

pitied

no one chooses refugee camps

or strip searches where your

body is left aching

or prison,

because prison is safer

than a city of fire

and one prison guard

in the night

is better than a truckload

of men who look like your father

no one could take it

no one could stomach it

no one skin would be tough enough

the

go home blacks

refugees

dirty immigrants

asylum seekers sucking our country dry

niggers with their hands out

they smell strange

savage

messed up their country and now they want

to mess ours up

how do the words

the dirty looks

roll off your backs

maybe because the blow is softer

than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender

than fourteen men between

your legs

or the insults are easier

to swallow

than rubble

than bone

than your child body

in pieces.

i want to go home,

but home is the mouth of a shark

home is the barrel of the gun

and no one would leave home unless home

chased you to the shore

unless home told you

to quicken your legs

leave your clothes behind

crawl through the desert

wade through the oceans

drown 

save

be hunger

beg

forget pride

your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying-

leave,

run away from me now

i dont know what i've become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here.

--Warsan Shire (1988- ), Somali-British poet, musician, and artist

Image: Flight, an installation by war artist Arabella Dorman in St. James's Church, Picadilly, London, from December 20, 2015-February 8, 2016. The dinghy was recovered from the island of Lesbos.

According to Victoria Emily Jones at her Art & Theology blog, "The rubber sea vessel Dorman used in the installation was designed to carry fifteen people but ended up carrying sixty-two. (Such overcrowding on refugee-filled boats is the norm.) While en route, it began taking on water, and its passengers had to be rescued by the Greek coast guard. Luckily, everyone survived. Passengers on other overtaxed vessels between Turkey and Greece have not been so lucky."

The Still, Small Voice

Open, Lord, my inward ear,
  And bid my heart rejoice;
Bid my quiet spirit hear
  The comfort of thy voice:

Never in the whirlwind found,
  Or where earthquakes rock the place, —
Still and silent is the sound,
  The whisper, of thy grace.

From the world of sin and noise
  And hurry I withdraw;
For the small and inward voice
  I wait with humble awe:
Silent am I now and still,
  Would not in thy presence move:
To my waiting soul reveal
  The secret of thy love!

--Charles Wesley, Anglican priest, poet, hymn writer, and founder of Methodism

Scriptural reference: 1 Kings 19:1-15a (Proper 7, Year C of the RCL, track 1)

Once the World Was Perfect

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.
Then we took it for granted.
Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.
Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.
And once Doubt ruptured the web,
All manner of demon thoughts
Jumped through—
We destroyed the world we had been given
For inspiration, for life—
Each stone of jealousy, each stone
Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.
No one was without a stone in his or her hand.
There we were,
Right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other
In the dark.
And now we had no place to live, since we didn't know
How to live with each other.
Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another
And shared a blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.
The light made an opening in the darkness.
Everyone worked together to make a ladder.
A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,
And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,
And their children, all the way through time—
To now, into this morning light to you.

-- Joy Harjo (1951- ), Muscogee (Creek) American, US Poet Laureate 2019- . musician and artist, from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, 2015.

On Children

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that his arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
He also loves the bow that is stable.

--Khalil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-American artist, painter, writer, and poet, from The Prophet, 1923

An American Sunrise

We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We
were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike.
It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight.
Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We
made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could sing
so we drummed a fire-lit pathway up to those starry stars. Sin
was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We
were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin
chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little gin
will clarify the dark and make us all feel like dancing. We
had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz
I argued with a Pueblo as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June,
forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We
know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die
soon.

--Joy Harjo (1951- ), Muscogee (Creek) American, US poet laureate 2019-, from Poetry magazine, February 2017


Photo by Shawn Miller for the Library of Congress, June 19, 2019

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

--Joy Harjo (1951- ), Muscogee (Creek) American, named US Poet Laureate today, from Mad Love and War, 1990



Photo of a Golden Eagle in Flight from the US Geological Survey.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

—Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), Irish poet, Nobel laureate, teacher, and translator, from Death of a Naturalist, 1966.