Sharon G. Thornton

Sharon G. Thornton

from "Broken Yet Beloved: A Pastoral Theology of the Cross"

(Chalice Press: 2002.  pp.61)

The cross simply calls us to take a stand, to break with the neutrality and passivity and account for whose side we are on.  In this way Paul's injunction "to take up your cross" is a call to join the struggle for justice.  Or as Soelle says, "Put yourself on the side of the damned of this world."

Douglas John Hall has called the theology of the cross the "thin tradition" that has always been present in some form through out the history of Christianity.  It has functioned to critique reigning ideologies and the church's tendency toward abuse.  He is not talking about times when the church has distorted the meaning of the cross and used it to subdue dissent or impose imperialistic aims.  Instead, a theology of the cross as the "thin tradition" offers an interpretive framework for entering into historical ambiguities in order to engage people who are suffering.  The "thin tradition" is a political interpretation of the cross.  Soelle rightly agrees, "The cross is the place where Christians stand when they begin to become aware of the civilization of injustice, and of estrangement as sin."

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness

 

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

 

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

 

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

 

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

 

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

 

(Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems)

Suddenly by Sharon Olds

Suddenly by Sharon Olds   (Ruth Stone, June 8, 1915 - November 19, 2011) And suddenly, it's today, it's this morning they are putting Ruth into the earth, her breasts going down, under the hill, like the moon and sun going down together. O I know, it's not Ruth--what was Ruth went out, slowly, but this was her form, beautiful and powerful as the old, gorgeous goddesses who were terrible, too, not telling a lie for anyone--and she'd been left here so long, among mortals, by her mate--who could not, one hour, bear to go on being human. And I've gone a little crazy myself with her going, which seems to go against logic, the way she has always been there, with her wonder, and her generousness, her breasts like two voluptuous external hearts. I am so glad she kept them, all her life, and she got to be buried in them-- she 96, and they maybe 82, each, which is 164 years of pleasure and longing.  And think of all the poets who have suckled at her riskiness, her risque, her body politic, her outlaw grace!  What she came into this world with, with a mew and cry, she gave us.  In her red sweater and her red hair and her raw melodious Virginia crackle, she emptied herself fully out into her songs and our song-making, we would not have made our songs without her. O dear one, what is this?  You are not a child, though you dwindled, you have not retraced your path, but continued to move straight forward to where we will follow you, radiant mother.  Red Rover, cross over.   Copyright © 2013 by Sharon Olds. Used with permission of the author.

About This Poem "When Ruth Stone, one of our great American poets, died, I was not able to get to Vermont for her burial. That morning, I sat by the window, over Riverside Drive, in New York City, and let my mind go, took off its collar and leash, and let it run--straight to her. All I asked of my mind was that it report back to me what it saw, what it thought and felt. After the poem was finished (by hand, by ballpoint in grocery-store notebook), and typed, and revised a little, it was ready to go out and seek other lovers of Ruth Stone's poems, with whom to observe and mourn her passing, and to praise her. Later I had the sorrowing joy of reading Toi Derricotte's story of her deep friendship with Ruth and her family, and of the day of the burial in her essay 'Ruth Stone's Funeral' which was published in Water-Stone Review, Volume 15, 2012. Thus do we all keep each other company."  --Sharon Olds

Wildpeace. (Yehuda Amichai)

 

Wildpeace

 

Not the peace of a cease-fire 

not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb, 

but rather 

as in the heart when the excitement is over 

and you can talk only about a great weariness. 

I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult. 

And my son plays with a toy gun that knows 

how to open and close its eyes and say Mama. 

A peace 

without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,

without words, without 

the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be 

light, floating, like lazy white foam. 

A little rest for the wounds - who speaks of healing? 

(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation 

to the next, as in a relay race: 

the baton never falls.) 

 

Let it come 

like wildflowers, 

suddenly, because the field 

must have it: wildpeace. 

 

~ Yehuda Amichai ~

 

(The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell)

 

The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry

The Wild Geese

 

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer's end.  In time's maze

over the fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves.  We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed's marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes.  Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear,

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here.  And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear.  What we need is here.

 

~ Wendell Berry ~

 

(Collected Poems 1957-1982)

Identity, A.R. Ammons

Identity By A. R. Ammons (1926 - 2001) 1) An individual spider web identifies a species: an order of instinct prevails           through all accidents of circumstance,                     though possibility is high along the peripheries of spider                                         webs:                                         you can go all                               around the fringing attachments                               and find disorder ripe, entropy rich, high levels of random,                     numerous occasions of accident: 2) the possible settings of a web are infinite:                     how does the spider keep                               identity                     while creating the web                     in a particular place?                     how and to what extent                               and by what modes of chemistry                               and control? it is wonderful                     how things work: I will tell you                                         about it                                         because it is interesting and because whatever is moves in weeds                     and stars and spider webs and known                                         is loved:                               in that love,                               each of us knowing it,                               I love you, for it moves within and beyond us,                               sizzles in to winter grasses, darts and hangs with bumblebees by summer windowsills:                               I will show you the underlying that takes no image to itself,                     cannot be shown or said, but weaves in and out of moons and bladderweeds,                               is all and                     beyond destruction                     because created fully in no particular form:                                         if the web were perfectly pre-set,                                         the spider could                               never find                               a perfect place to set it in: and                               if the web were perfectly adaptable, if freedom and possibility were without limit,                                         the web would lose its special identity:           the row-strung garden web keeps order at the center where space is freest (intersecting that the freest                               "medium" should                               accept the firmest order) and that order                                         diminishes toward the periphery                     allowing at the points of contact                               entropy equal to entropy.

For Presence, John O'Donohue

For Presence By John O'Donohue (1956 - 2008) Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence. Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses. Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon. Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path. Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity. May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame. May anxiety never linger about you. May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul. Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention. Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul. May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder