“O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled.
-Robert Frost.
Category Archives: Poetry
God’s grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Coming
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
-R.S. Thomas
rounding
I ask each of the icons above my desk
a personal question: That nimbus around
your solemn head-is it gold beaten so air-thin
it’s only a wisp of wafer, like the round
leaf of fiber floated onto our tongues
at the alter? A circle-in a wedding ring
it speaks for a union without flaw. But if
it gets worn, lost, broken, may it be mended?
And the moon, fat as a pearl, a grape, a wheel
of cheese-in two weeks gnawed away a bit more
every night, like a wheat cracker, by
the mice of heaven-by what mystery is it fleshed out
to roundness like the planets the suns?
At Eucharist the priest holds high, in his thin
hands, a disc almost as big as a dinner plate.
He bends this little sun vertically in half
and half again; it cracks each time with a sound
that splits the sanctuary like a sharp arrow, and us
with it. We take this broken Son onto our tongues,
swallowed, into our gut. Eating, we are made whole,
as we join bodily the holy Circle of God.
-Luci Shaw, from: What the Light was Like
the possibilities of clay
There’s this bearded man I met
who loves clay. There must be
something of Adam in him, he is
that red, that ready. Between
his strong clay-colored palms
he rolls glistening balls of the stuff,
each its own small, malleable planet.
Then, before firing the beads, he thrusts
a wire through each from its north
to south poles. Kiln-hardened,
they will then be ready to offer themselves
for decoration—brilliant pigments
in wild and quirky designs
according to the artist’s
God-fired imagination. Glazed,
strung on strings, they will become
jewels hurled into the world to show
that humble earth can turn beautiful,
can have worth, can even bring in cash
for those with little else to sell.
-Luci Shaw
present
At light-speed, God-speed,
time collapses into now so that
we may see Christ’s wounds as
still bleeding, his torso,
that ready sponge, still
absorbing our vice, our toxic shame.
He is still being pierced
by every hateful nail
we hammer home. In this
Golgotha moment his body –
chalice for the dark weeping
of the whole world – brims,
spilling over as his lifeblood
drains. His dying into the earth
begins the great reversal –
as blood from a vein leaps
into the needle, so with his rising,
we surge into light.
-Luci Shaw, from: What the Light was Like
In no strange land
The kingdom of God is within you
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air–
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!–
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places–
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry–and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry–clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!
-Francis Thompson
patience
Patience is waiting.
Patience is waiting, is Advent.
Patience is waiting for a child to be born.
Patience is the love of God.
Patience is a slow-blooming flower,
modest and full of promise.
Patience knows how to be sill and silent.
Patience is gentle and sweet.
Patience understands the beauty of quiet inner growth that cannot be hurried.
Patient chases away pressures and stress.
Patience can never be overwhelmed.
Patience teaches the art of living with unfulfilled desires.
Patience is serene and tranquil.
Patience is a motherly virtue.
Patience is winter waiting for spring.
Patience is the thawing of a frozen heart.
Patience is taking one step at a time.
Patience is renouncing control.
Patience is running with perseverance the race.
Patience does not seek rest, it provides rest.
Patience is our reserve fuel when the tank runs empty.
It will carry us safely to our destination.
Patience is fasting.
Patience is starting allover.
Patience is rejoicing on a Monday morning.
Patience is the continuous process of uncluttering whats around you and inside you.
Patience is committing yourself in faith to God’s plan for you.
Patience is longing without receiving.
Patience creates rom where there is no room.
Patience creates time where there is no time.
Patience keeps on striving without tangible results.
Patience is potty-trainging my down syndrome daughter Margaret.
Patience keeps on praying.
Patience keeps on keepin’ on.
Patience is living an ocean away.
Patience is looking for a lost treasure.
Patience is living with a deceitful heat.
Patience is living with unanswered questions.
The eyes of Christ are patient.
-Ingrid Trobisch, The Confident Woman
choruses from “the rock”
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
…
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
-T.S. Eliot
where sorrow and joy meet
Sorrow was beautiful, but her beauty was the beauty of the moonlight shining through the leafy branches of the trees in the wood, and making little pools of silver here and there on the soft green moss below. When Sorrow sang, her notes were like the low sweet call of the nightingale, and in her eyes was the unexpected gaze of one who has ceased to look for coming gladness. She could weep in tender sympathy with those who weep, but to rejoice with those who rejoice was unknown to her.
Joy was beautiful, too, but his was the radiant beauty of the summer mornings. His eyes still held the glad laughter of childhood, and his hair had the glint of the sunshine’s kiss. When Joy sang his voice soared upward as the lark’s and his step was the step of a conqueror who has never known defeat. He could rejoice with all who rejoice but to weep with those who weep was unknown to him.
“But we can never be united,” said Sorrow wistfully. “No, never.” And Joy’s eyes shadowed as he spoke. “My path lies through the sunlit meadows, the sweetest roses await my coming to pour forth their most joyous lays.”
“My path, “ said Sorrow, turning slowly away, “leads through the darkening woods, with moon-flowers only shall my hands be filled. Yet the sweetest of all earth-songs–the love song of the night shall be mine; farewell, Joy, farewell.”
Even as she spoke they became conscious of a form standing beside them; dimly seen, but of a Kingly Presence, and a great and holy awe stole over them as they sank on their knees before Him.
“I see Him as the King of Joy,” whispered Sorrow, “for on His head are many crowns, and the nail prints in His hands and feet are the scars of a great victory. Before Him all my sorrow is melting away into deathless love and gladness, and I give myself to Him forever.”
“Nay, Sorrow,” said Joy softly, “but I see Him as the King of Sorrow, and the crown on His head is a crown of thorns and the nail prints in His hands and feet are the scars of a great agony. I, too, give myself to Him forever, for sorrow with Him must be sweeter than any joy that I have known.”
“Then we are one in Him,” they cried in gladness, “for none but He can unite Joy and Sorrow.” Hand in hand they passed out into the world to follow Him through storm and sunshine, in the bleakness of winter cold and the warmth of summer gladness, “as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.”
-Taken from Streams in the Desert
Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
peacocks for pilgrims 