A Sonnet for the New Liturgical Year

Advent and the new church calendar year began Sunday, November 30. Here is a sonnet and poem to begin the season.

Prologue: Sounding the Seasons
By Malcolm Guite 
Tangled in time, we go by hints and guesses,
Turning the wheel of each returning year.
But in the midst of failures and successes
We sometimes glimpse the Love that casts out fear.
Sometimes the heart remembers its own reasons
And beats a Sanctus as we sing our story,
Tracing the threads of grace, sounding the seasons
That lead at last through time to timeless glory.
From the first yearning for a Saviour’s birth
To the full joy of knowing sins forgiven
We start our journey here on God’s good earth
To catch an echo of the choirs of heaven.
I send these out, returning what was lent,
Turning to praise each ‘moment’s monument’.

Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year
By Malcolm Guite
(https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/)

And so we gather the scattered pieces...

And so we take the ragged fragments,

the patches of darkness
that give shape to the light;
the scraps of desires
unslaked or realized;
the memories of spaces
of blessing, of pain.

And so we gather the scattered pieces

the hopes we carry
fractured or whole;
the struggles of birthing
exhausted, elated;
the places of welcome
that bring healing and life.

And so we lay them at the threshold, God;

bid you hold them, bless them, use them;
ask you tend them, mend them,
transform them
to keep us warm,
make us whole, and send us forth.

Prayer by Jan L. Richardson (Through the Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas)
(Originally published in Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas by Jan L. Richrdson)

The Singing Bowl

A new book of poetry on my wish list...

Singing Bowl

By Malcolm Guite

Begin the song exactly where you are,

Remain within the world of which you’re made.

Call nothing common in the earth or air,

Accept it all and let it be for good.

Start with the very breath you breathe in now,

This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood

And listen to it, ringing soft and low.

Stay with the music, words will come in time.

Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow.

Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime

Is richness rising out of emptiness,

And timelessness resounding into time.

And when the heart is full of quietness

Begin the song exactly where you are.

Taken from: The Singing Bowl: Collected Poems by Malcolm Guite

Weekly Rilke :: "Go to the Limits of Your Longing"

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
From Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, 1.59
Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Saturday Morning Poetry with Rilke

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
(From The Book of Hours, Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

My looking ripens things...

The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.

"I, 1" by Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.

I Am the Kite

I am the kite:
Red and orange,
Fire in the sky,
Stunt Kite,
Cutting loops
And gashes in the blue,
My skin vibrates
On my frame with power.

I cut the cord
To fly yet higher still,
To show the rest
What freedom's all about.
I turn and twist
My fanciest curl
And set my course
For distance.

But, my mistake
Was not
To take the wind for granted,
But the cord
That tensioned me
To one I did not see
So far below.

The flyer is not me.

Lord, give me the anchor. Give me pause.
Let me know in freedom's limited flight,
The kite's first cause.

Bruce Barton Bailey
Sunday, May 29, 1994
University Presbyterian Church, Seattle, Washington

Fire

What makes a fire burn

is space between the logs,

a breathing space.

Too much of a good thing,

too many logs

packed in too tight

can douse the flames

almost as surely

as a pail of water would.

So building fires

requires attention

to the spaces in between,

as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build

open spaces

in the same way

we have learned

to pile on the logs,

then we can come to see how

it is fuel, and absence of the fuel

together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log

lightly from time to time.

A fire

grows

simply because the space is there,

with openings

in which the flame

that knows just how it wants to burn

can find its way.

~Judy Sorum Brown
(Leader’s Guide to Reflective Practice by Judy Brown)

On Exploring and Change...

“Exploring” by Wendell Berry
Always in the (wilderness) when you leave familiar ground
and step off alone into a new place,
 there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement,
a little nagging of dread.
It is the ancient fear of the Unknown,
and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.
What you are doing is exploring.
You are undertaking the first experience,
not of the place, but of yourself in that place.
It is an experience of our essential loneliness;
for nobody can discover the world for anybody else.
It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves
that it becomes a common ground and a common bond,
and we cease to be alone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THIS IS AN HOUR of change.
Within it we stand uncertain on the border of light.
Shall we draw back or cross over?
Where shall our hearts turn?
Shall we draw back, my brother, my sister,
or cross over?
This is the hour of change, and within it,
we stand quietly
on the border of light.
What lies before us?
Shall we draw back, my brother, my sister,
or cross over?

By Leah Goldberg, adapted; 
Mishkan T’Filah for Travelers: A Reform Siddur 
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2009

Love and Live the Questions

Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart

And try to love the questions themselves

Like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue

Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given

For you would not be able to live them

And the point is to live everything

Live the questions now

And perhaps without knowing it

You will live along some day into the answers

~ Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Letters to a Young Poet

Fresh Vision

These past few months during the church season of Ordinary Time I have been using the book At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time by Sarah Arthur. You can read more about the book…HERE. The passages of poetry, prayers, fiction, and scripture have been a perfect fit. I have been challenged on the idea of “slow reading,” which is especially necessary when reading poetry. I will be writing more about that soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a poem and a prayer from the book that resonated with me this week. These passages from the section titled “Fresh Vision” are encouraging as I continue to embrace this year of “Patient Trust”.

Morning Reflections

Enuma Okoro

What is this unfolding, this slow-

going unraveling of gift held

in hands open

to the wonder and enchantment of it all?

What is this growing, this rare

showing, like blossoming

of purple spotted forests

by roadsides grown weary with winter months?

Seasons affected, routinely disordered

by playful disturbances of divine glee

weaving through limbs with

sharpened shards of mirrored light,

cutting dark spaces, interlacing creation,

commanding life with whimsical delight.

What is this breaking, this hopeful

re-making, shifting stones, addressing dry bones,

dizzying me with blessings,

intercepting my grieving

and raising the dead all around me?

Lord, purge our eyes to see

Lord, purge our eyes to see

Within the seed a tree

Within the glowing egg a bird,

Within the shroud a butterfly:

Till taught by such, we see

Beyond all creatures Thee;

And hearken for Thy tender word,

And hear it, “Fear not: it is I.”

~ Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)