Glance, and I will escape you.
Look, and I will show you.
Behold, and I will move you.
Observe, and I will educate you.
See, and I will change you.
Changed, you will see me.
Category: Prayers & Liturgy
A Tuesday Examen
Scattered across lonely seas
dwell the lilies of desire.
Dotted between the balancing
green are other frondish delights
with fingers extended on palms
upraised, deterred by nothing
but the gentle floating away of
newly made ripples, starting
from a center and pushing out
to the edges where the shoreline
awaits to receive what waves may come.
They have made big what once
was small, white-capped wonder
from still and never-sunken petals.
The end exhumes the beginning
but little beginnings brought
such proud endings, humbled
by endless sandy sleep. Here
God is waiting.
God is watching.
God is cooking fish.
Lily: www.parentdish.com
Crashing waves: www.123rf.com
A Monday Examen
There is no way to distinguish
the place where the radiance of evening
touches the face of God.
Just fingers of grace-soaked light
long, drawling and sure,
that pull at the last, dark places
and weed them out of the heated ground
to die quietly in the burning
breath of love, and then
to live again.
A Sunday Examen
God’s tears like sweet nectar fall
in swollen rivulets down the back of my life.
The words of the day jumbled in
tumbling silence portray what little
is left to say from one with too much to say.
So I do what should be done
at the brink of evening. I draw the shutters
on a well-muscled mouth housing
too many pointless words and
listen.
Image from www.flickr.com
A Saturday Examen
Let the baptismal waters drown this insubstantial
love and choke the complexities of my lostness.
Cleanse my spiritual palette and don
the insignificance of wayward wants
upon your crested waking.
Splash your drops of salvation, dampened perfection,
on this tired brow, furrowed from wrongdoing
and convince a soul, drawn in ink
of the erasable foes of night.
A Friday Examen
Sometimes, on the way into darkness
I stub my toe on the eyelash of God.
Sometimes, forgotten in never-spoken dreams
I hear the hushed and tender tones of
Heaven breathing the un-gated lyrics of eternity.
Sometimes, I even stop to listen.
Evening examen-ate
Rooting down inside the soil of today’s plantings,
what is there to find of nourishing value
to those forced to hunt for food?
Will my table be full of happy gleanings,
the imperishable crumbs of imperfect bread
dipped in the eternal whimsy of Photo: www.trappist.net
God’s good thoughts?
Will those left knocking outside
the door of my own inner garden
remain in hungered silence?
Or, will the gardener open up
the squeaky gate that leads to nowhere
and feed paupers on a king’s repast?
If only that can be found,
then this has been a good day.
Beannacht (Blessing)
As I’ve mentioned about a thousand times, I’m possessive of a deeply Celtic, mystical spirit and as such, am drawn to others of similar ilk. Irish Catholic poet, writer and Hegelian philosopher, John O’Donohue (1956-2008) is one such kindred spirit. At the risk of sounding crass, to read O’Donohue is to make love with words. His facility with nuance, the numinous and near, the transcendent and tame, of the thin places of the world is second to none.
The following piece is one of my favorites. I’ve used this in liturgy many times and return to it on almost any occasion just to speak the words that, in themselves, bless in the saying of them. Read it once quietly. Read it twice more quietly. Read it out loud a third time. Finally, let it read you.
Then, wait. You will not be disappointed.
Beannacht
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
Picture: www.garyverderamo.com
and still we hear their distant song
wednesday april 17 2013
__________________
and still we hear their distant song
on nights when the purple breezes sigh
then come whispers not of night and dark
but their harmony hints at a repose
in shadows and the corners of our memories
they salute us and bid us remember
the rest whose days now are sad
for they cannot sing the same words
because they know not yet
the song
Picture: www.southafricanartists.com
but slower still the ones who sleep
for friends lost
tuesday april 16 2013
__________________
but slower still the ones who sleep
in lonely earth now hungrily dining
upon their broken bones
a soil home full too soon
but languish not these shining ones
for now their mercurial feet
dash from joy to light and back again
in the presence of still greater ones
who welcome their company
though we see not their dancing soles
and feel the loss beneath our own
their slow sleep tells stories
of happier waking dreams
now their own
Picture: www.portfolio.du.edu
innerwoven 