The Mad-Eyed Monk
Because we are all Monks and our place of work is a seminary, our work a sacrament, our family a monastery, our home a sanctuary; may we learn what they are teaching us without believing God is elsewhere...
Monday, November 13, 2023
Saturday, January 20, 2018
For My Grand Child On the Way
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you...
Jeremiah 1:5
You have begun your incarnation here.
You are being beautifully made
from the splendorous dust,
the silence
of your mother's womb,
the abundant allowances of love.
You are on your way
and already
we welcome you:
the earth and its fullness,
noisy with heaven,
our disheveled love.
We hold you now in our hearts' light-
haven from all dark
onslaughts through time.
For our days here are like the grassy fields,
a brief flowering
the wind passes over,
and the place we are
will know us no more
except by love,
the long song we enter into,
the gracious song
God is singing us through.
Monday, January 15, 2018
Snow Falling Into Fields
Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude
where everything I touch is turned into prayer:
where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer,
the wind in the trees is my prayer,
for God is all in all.
Thomas Merton
It is the still quiet at first,
or rather, the still quiet
that lowers each of us
into the well of His immense silence
within and beyond all silence;
that guides me gently
into the thick prayer of winter evening fields
where no paths are visible
beneath the falling and filling light;
the erasure of my coming and eventual going.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Torpor
Then he said to them all:
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves
and take up their cross daily and follow me."
The cost of love
again collects
against the off-kilter
eons of our dense egos.
From the beginning
and now
we struggle in our deficit
to love radically,
to go against the hatred
that coils
in our dark
dysfunctions within,
our resistance to meet violence,
in all its guises,
with the strong hands of kindness;
the taking up of our crosses;
the dangerous consequences
of love.
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves
and take up their cross daily and follow me."
Luke 9:23
The cost of love
again collects
against the off-kilter
eons of our dense egos.
From the beginning
and now
we struggle in our deficit
to love radically,
to go against the hatred
that coils
in our dark
dysfunctions within,
our resistance to meet violence,
in all its guises,
with the strong hands of kindness;
the taking up of our crosses;
the dangerous consequences
of love.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Rain Clouds
Yours are the heavens and yours is the earth,
you set firm the globe and all it contains.
Psalm 88
As if the clouds were not content to be
the nebulous shook over us--
violet wings soft fleeting--
the grey-thin skin over the blue body of sky.
As if they wanted to be
the soft hands over the world
touching the boundaries of things:
the edges of the myriad
leaves and soft palms of wildflowers
the fields are lifting
above the bent blades of grass,
the delicate root-hairs,
my looking up
as if blind
and feeling the rain
touching
for the first time.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Regarding Love
On your exceedingly great mercy, and on that alone, rests all my hope.
St. Augustine
Photo:CScodova
To regard anything
is to regard You.
The infinitesimal sings its small song of You,
the hugeness bends,
the rain's prayer descends
to the lowest place,
the earth, in all its indifference
and glory, You sustain.
And our souls,
our souls are woven, have their breadth in You,
for the flesh ensouls, longs
for You.
May we do what we are meant to do:
to be a great many
in love with You in each other
and any good we may will with You.
St. Augustine
To regard anything
is to regard You.
The infinitesimal sings its small song of You,
the hugeness bends,
the rain's prayer descends
to the lowest place,
the earth, in all its indifference
and glory, You sustain.
And our souls,
our souls are woven, have their breadth in You,
for the flesh ensouls, longs
for You.
May we do what we are meant to do:
to be a great many
in love with You in each other
and any good we may will with You.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Guests
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:5
and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:5
photo by CScodova
The blooming dogwoods stand
in the yard, all night,
like mystical guests.
I greet them beyond the panes
as I pass through the rooms
of my dark house
just before the approaching shift
of light changes
all things;
their pearling susurruses
and petal-crosses
held out like heaven's pale-
hands full of crowns and nourishment,
after a harsh
and lean crusade.
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