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Gamble everything for love,
if you’re a true human being.

If not, leave
this gathering.

Half-heartedness
doesn’t reach
into majesty.

You set out
to find God,
but then you keep
stopping for long periods
at meanspirited roadhouses.

- Rumi

Sing it again...

repost for the feast:


SONG ON THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY

Be bold
like the
Magi.

Do not
tarry,
settling

into
your comfort,
but rather

set out
keeping
the star

in your
vision.
It will lead

you
to the place
you are

most
in need of
the place

where
God is.
And if

an angel
warns you
in a dream

not to
return
by the old

way,
please
listen.

CHRISTINE RODGERS

The Autumn Wind

(autumn storm by andrew gillette)


The Autumn Wind is a pirate
Blustering in from sea
With a rollicking song he sweeps along
Swaggering boisterously
His face is weather beaten
He wears a hooded sash
With his silver hat about his head
And a bristly black moustache
He growls as he storms the country
A villain big and bold
And the trees all shake and quiver and quake
As he robs them of their gold
The Autumn wind is a Raider
Pillaging just for fun
He'll knock you round and upside down
And laugh when he's conquered and won

by: Steve Sabol

or

He was too much for them

It was the much in Magdalene that Jesus loved.
for, as Mark says,
“He was too much for them”
like a woman who loves too much
like an ointment that costs too much
and is spilled too much
like a seventy times seven God
who forgives too much
like a seed that grows too much
and yields thirty
sixty
a hundred fold

by John Shea

The thing you must remember

the thing you must remember is how, as a child, you worked hours in the art room, the teacher's hand over yours, molding the little clay dog.

You must remember how nothing mattered but the imagined dog's fur, the shape of his ears and his paws. The gray clay felt dangerous, your small hands were pressing what you couldn't say with your limited words. When the dog's back stiffened, then cracked into white shards in the kiln, you learned how the beautiful suffers from too much attention, how clumsy a single vision can grow, and fragile with trying too hard.

The thing you must remember is the art teacher's capable hands: large, rough and grainy, over yours, holding on.

-maggie anderson

A Thinker for our times...

by: Peter Maurin

Share your wealth
God wants us
to be our brother's keeper.
To feed the hungry,
to clothe the naked,
to shelter the homeless,
to instruct the ignorant,
at a personal sacrifice,
is what God
wants us to do.
What we give to the poor
for Christ's sake
is what we carry with us
when we die.
As Jean Jacques Rousseau says:
"When a man dies
he carries
in his clutched hands
only that which
he has given away."

Why not be a beggar?
People who are in need
and are not afraid to beg
give to people not in need
the occasion to do good
for goodness' sake.
Modern society
calls the beggar
bum and panhandler
and gives him the bum's rush.
The Greeks used to say
that people in need
are the ambassadors of the gods.
We read in the Gospel:
"As long as you did it
to one of the least
of My brothers,
you did it to Me."
While modern society
calls them beggars
bums and panhandlers,
they are in fact
the Ambassadors of God.
To be God's ambassador
is something
to be proud of.

At a Sacrifice
In the first centuries
of Christianity
the hungry were fed
at a personal sacrifice,
the naked were clothed
at a personal sacrifice,
the homeless were sheltered
at a personal sacrifice.
And because the poor
were fed, clothed and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,
the pagans used to say
about the Christians
"See how they love one another."
In our own day
the poor are no longer
fed, clothed, and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice
but at the expense
of the taxpayers.
And because the poor
are no longer
fed, clothed, and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice
the pagans say about the Christians
"See how they pass the buck."

Seven Stanzas on Easter: John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

A meditation...

A Meditation on Henry Ossama Tanner's "The Annunciation"

Yet you do not blink.
In the intimacy of a bedchamber
Your soul is awakened from sleep
Fragile flesh before angelic brilliance

Your rumpled night sheets tossed aside,
You listen in peace with your whole self
To the question that will define history.
Holding its breath for your answer,
All heaven pauses.

"LET IT BE DONE TO ME..."

Here it begins.
In such utter simplicity,
In quiet strength, at the appointed hour,
With the rippled rungs of time at your feet,
And the broad lines of history at your back.

At the balance of His grace and your will,
Eve reborn, humanity to be redeemed
Through a child, from a virgin
Whose name is Mary.


-J. Michael Sparough, S.J.

SONG ON THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY

Be bold
like the
Magi.

Do not
tarry,
settling

into
your comfort,
but rather

set out
keeping
the star

in your
vision.
It will lead

you
to the place
you are

most
in need of
the place

where
God is.
And if

an angel
warns you
in a dream

not to
return
by the old

way,
please
listen.

CHRISTINE RODGERS

Here I am

Here I am,
where underneath bridges
of our winter cities
homeless people sleep.

Here I am,
where in decaying houses
little children shiver,
crying for the cold.
Where are you?

Here I am,
with people in the line-up,
anxious for a handout
aching for a job.

Here I am
when pensioners and strikers
sing and march together
wanting something new.
Where are you?

Here I am
where two or three are gathered
ready to be altered,
sharing bread and wine.

Here I am
where those who hear the preaching
change their way of living,
find the way to life.
Where are you?

-Brian Wren

Monet Refuses the Operation

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor,

you say that there are no haloes

around the streetlights in Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life

to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,

to soften and blur and finally banish

the edges you regret I don't see,

to learn that the line I called the horizon

does not exist and sky and water,

so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see

Rouen cathedral is built

of parallel shafts of sun,

and now you want to restore

my youthful errors:
Fixed notions of top and bottom,

the illusion of three-dimensional space,

wisteria separate from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you

the Houses of Parliament dissolve

night after night

to become the fluid dream of the Thames?

I will not return to a universe

of objects that don't know each other,

as if islands were not the lost children

of one great continent.

The world is flux,
and light becomes what it touches:

becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white
and cerulean lamps, small fists passing sunlight

so quickly to one another

that it would take long, streaming hair

inside my brush to catch it.

To paint the speed of light!

Our weighted shapes, these verticals,

burn to mix with air

and changes our bones, skin, clothes to gases.

Doctor,

if only you could see

how heaven pulls earth into its arms

and how infinitely the heart expands

to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

~ Lisel Mueller ~

(Sixty Years of American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets)

Wash over me...

Nothing in the world

Is as soft and yielding as water.

Yet, for dissolving the hard and the inflexible,

Nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;

The gentle overcomes the rigid.

Everyone knows this is true.

But few can put it into practice.

-Tao te Ching-

Ithaka

Ithaka

by: C.P. Cavafy

When you start on your journey to Ithaka

then pray that the road is long,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Do not fear Laistrygonians,

and the Cyclops and the angry Poseidon.

You will never meet such as these on your path,

if your thoughts remain lofty

if a fine emotion touches your body and your spirit.

You will never meet the Laistrygonians,

the Cyclops, and the fierce wild Poseidon

if you do not carry them within your soul

if your soul does not raise them up before you.

Then pray that the road is long.

That the summer mornings are many,

that you will encounter ports seen for the first time

with such pleasures, such joy!

Stop at Phoenician markets,

and purchase fine merchandise,

mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony,
and pleasurable perfumes of all kinds,

visit hosts of Egyptian cities,

to learn and learn from those who have knowledge.

Always keep Ithaka fixed in your mind.

To arrive, your ultimate goal.

But do not hurry the voyage at all.

It is better to let it last for long years;

and even to anchor at the isle when you are old,

rich with all that you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka will offer you riches.

Ithaka has given your a beautiful voyage.

Without her you would never have taken the road.

But she has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not defrauded you.

With great wisdom you have gained,

with so much experience,

you must sure have understood by then

what Ithakas mean.

Thirst

THIRST
by: Mary Oliver

Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have.
I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons.
Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and bell;
grant me in your mercy a little more time.
Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart.
Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing except which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

The Dream

Let us dream of a church
in which all members know surely and simply
God's great love,
and each is certain that in the divine heart
we are all known by name.

In which Jesus is the very Word,
our window into the Father's heart;
the sign of God's hope and his design for all humankind.

In which the Spirit is not a party symbol,
but wind and fire in everyone;
gracing the church with a kaleidoscope of gifts
and constant renewal for all.

A church in which
worship is lively and fun as well as reverent and holy;
and we might be moved to dance and laugh;
to be solemn, cry or beat the breast.

A church in which
People know how to pray and enjoy it –
frequently and regularly, privately and corporately,
in silence and in word and song.

A church in which
The eucharist is the center of life
and servanthood the center of mission:
the servant Lord truly known in the breaking of the bread.
With service flowing from worship,
and everyone understanding
why a worship is called a service.

Let us dream of a church
in which the sacraments,
free from captivity by a professional elite,
are available in every congregation
regardless of size, culture, location or budget.

In which every congregation is free
to call forth from its midst priests and deacons,
sure in the knowledge that training and support services
are available to back them up.

In which the Word is sacrament too,
as dynamically present as bread and wine;
members, not dependent on professionals,
know what's what and who's who in the Bible,
and all sheep share in the shepherding.

In which discipline is a means,
not to self-justification,but to discipleship
and law is known to be a good servant but a very poor master.

A church
affirming life over death as much as life after death,
unafraid of change,
able to recognize God's hand in the revolutions,
affirming the beauty of diversity,
abhorring the imprisonment of uniformity,
as concerned about love in all relationships as it is about chastity,
and affirming the personal in all expressions of sexuality;
denying the separation between secular and sacred,
world and church,
since it is the world Christ came to and died for.

A church
without the answers,
but asking the right questions;
holding law and grace,
freedom and authority,
faith and works
together in tension,
by the Holy Spirit,
pointing to the glorious mystery who is God.

A church
So deeply rooted in gospel and tradition that,
like a living tree,
it can swing in the wind
and continually surprise us with new blossoms.

Let us dream of a church
with a radically renewed concept and practice of ministry
and a primitive understanding of the ordained offices.
Where there is no clerical status and no classes of Christians,
but all together know themselves to be part of the laos the holy people of God.

A ministering community
rather than a community gathered around a minister.
Where ordained people,
professional or not, employed or not,
are present for the sake of ordering and signing
the church's life and mission,
not as signs of authority or dependency,
nor of spiritual or intellectual superiority,
but with Pauline patterns of "ministry supporting church"
instead of the common pattern of "church supporting ministry."

Where bishops are signs and animators
of the church's unity, catholicity and apostolic mission.
Priests are signs and animators of her eucharistic life
and the sacramental presence of her Great High Priest.
And deacons are signs and animators
living reminders of the church's servanthood
as the body of Christ who came as, and is,
the servant slave of all God's beloved children.

Let us dream of a church
so salty and so yeasty
that it really would be missed if no longer around;
where there is wild sowing of seeds
and much rejoicing when they take root,
but little concern for success, comparative statistics,
growth or even survival.

A church so evangelical that its worship,
its quality of caring,
its eagerness to reach out to those in need cannot be contained.

A church
in which every congregation is in a process of becoming
free - autonomous, self-reliant, interdependent
none has special status:
the distinction between parish and mission gone.

But each congregation is in mission
and each Christian, gifted for ministry;
a crew on a freighter, not passengers on a luxury liner.
Peacemakers and healers abhorring violence in all forms
(maybe even football),
as concerned with societal healing
as with individual healing;
with justice as with freedom,
prophetically confronting the root causes of social,
political and economic ills.

A community:
an open, caring, sharing household of faith
where all find embrace, acceptance and affirmation.
A community:
under judgment, seeking to live with its own proclamation,
therefore,truly loving what the Lord commands
and desiring His promise.

And finally,
let us dream of a people called to recognize
all the absurdities in ourselves
and in one another,
including the absurdity that is LOVE,
serious about the call and the mission
but not, very much, about ourselves,
who, in the company of our Clown Redeemer
can dance and sing and laugh and cry in worship,
in ministry... and even in conflict.

- "The Dream," by Wesley Frensdorff

=============

Yes? No? Why? Why Not?

Take Joy!

Take Joy!

I salute you!

There is nothing I can give you which you have not;

but there is much, that while I cannot give, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.

Take Heaven.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.

Take Peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow, behind it, yet, within our reach, is joy.

Take Joy.

And so, at this Christmas time,

I greet you, with the prayer that for you,

now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

--Fra Giovanni, A.D. 1513