New Year's Poem (Margaret Avison)

NEW YEAR’S POEM

Margaret Avison

The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle

Along the windowledge.

          A solitary pearl

Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party

Lies in the suety, snow-luminous plainness

Of morning, on the windowledge beside them.

And all the furniture that circled stately

And hospitable when these rooms were brimmed

With perfumes, furs, and black-and-silver

Crisscross of seasonal conversation, lapses

Into its previous largeness.

         I remember

Anne’s rose-sweet gravity, and the stiff grave

Where cold so little can contain;

I mark the queer delightful skull and crossbones

Starlings and sparrows left, taking the crust,

And the long loop of winter wind

Smoothing its arc from dark Arcturus down

To the bricked corner of the drifted courtyard,

And the still windowledge.

          Gentle and just pleasure

It is, being human, to have won from space

This unchill, habitable interior

Which mirrors quietly the light

Of the snow, and the new year.

Frank Herbert

The mind can go either direction under stress - toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training. (Frank Herbert)

Frank Herbert

The mind can go either direction under stress - toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training. (Frank Herbert)

Sutta Nipata

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle,
and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.

- Sutta Nipata

Wisdom - A Prayer

Come, O Wisdom, come!

Word, spoken in eternity by mouth of the Most High,

O Wisdom of the mind and heart of God!

Come, O Wisdom, come!

Eternal Archetype, all creation's beauty

is fragment of your loveliness!

Come, O Wisdom, come!

Great Logos come to rest in the Virgin's womb!

O Little Wisdom born to us!

Almighty clothed in tenderness! 

Come, O Wisdom, come!

From end to end of time,

the grace of Love Incarnate orders all.

Come, O Wisdom, come!

O Wisdom, let me partake of you and yet still hunger,

and let me drink of you and always thirst.

Come, O Wisdom, come!

O Wisdom that is Love and love's Delight,

teach me to search him through the darkened streets

for whom our hearts long

Come, O Wisdom, come!

O Wisdom,

your words uttered in the beginning

generated a world of beauty and goodness,

giving purpose and value to each creature;

Instruct us in the way of prudence,

that we may nurture the world with justice and joy;

through the Name of the One who is Coming

Come, O Wisdom, come!

God's Grandeur (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

God's Grandeur

(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

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.

Macrina Wiederkehr "A Tree Full of Angels"

Frail and Glorious

Macrina Widerkehr

The waters of baptism flowed over me

and no original sin was seen.

Rather, the Eye of God beheld

a tiny mass of bones and flesh

soul and spirit

infinite possibility

pure process

new, empty, and free,

free to choose

good or evil

light or darkness

life or death

grace or sin.

It was my original union 

I was passing through the baptismal waters

being filled with power like unto God's

and God wept

at the possibility of me.

Then somewhere in between my baptism

and my daily life

My power like unto God's became scattered

I forgot my original union with God.

And as I grew 

I chose

good and evil

light and darkness

life and death

grace and sin.

With my baptism lost

I began to live my life fragmented,

standing on the edge of my baptismal powers

blind to their presence in the depths of my soul.

Yet all fragments are finally gathered up

and God does in us wonders

that others are not able to do.

So, on a day that felt like baptism

God gave me a glimpse of my hidden splendor,

made me aware of that original union

and my powers that had become scattered.

Now my life is ever spent

in calling home my scattered powers.

Eudora Welty

Events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find
their own order the continuous thread of revelation. 
-Eudora Welty

Advent Meditation

November 29, 2010

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. —Luke 1: 42

I remember the first time Iplaced my hands on the pregnant belly of a friend and felt her child kick. Startled at the life I felt within, my hand jumped back. My friend laughed and in her eyes I saw such profound joy. I could not help but share in her happiness. In that tiny movement, I felt God. We so easily see a spark of the Divine in infants. It is so much more difficult to notice it in others. What would it look like if we recognized each person as a gift from God, a glint of God’s light come into our lives? We should dance in the street and greet each other as old friends from a Holy memory. It is in others that we can see another part of ourselves, reaching out for unity and kicking from the womb as if to say "I know you! And I am here as well!"

Elaine Warn, Diocese of Montana

O God, who created all peoples in your image, we thank you for the wonderful diversity of races and cultures in this world. Enrich our lives by ever-widening circles of fellowship, and show us your presence in those who differ most from us, until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.