WAKING  UP

Poem for Today - Sunday - October 19, 2014

I  WAKE AND FEEL 

THE FELL OF DARK 

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say

Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament

Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent

To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see

The lost are like this, and their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

© Gerard Manley Hopkins,

In Hopkins, The Mystic Poets,

Preface by Rev. Thomas Ryan,

Page 58

SING TO THE LORD!

Poem for Today - October 18, 2014

SIMPLE SONG

Sing God a simple song, Lauda laude

Make it up as you go along, Lauda laude

Sing like you like to sing, God loves all simple things

For God is the simplest of all,

For God is the simplest of all.

I will sing the Lord a new song

To praise Him, to bless Him, to bless the Lord,

I will sing His praises while I live, all of my days.

Blessed is the man who loves the Lord,

Blessed is the man who praises Him,

Lauda, lauda, laude

And walks in His ways.

I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help

I will lift up my voice to the Lord

Singing Lauda, Laude

For the Lord is my shade

Is the shade upon my right hand

And the sun shall not smite me by day,

Nor the moon by night

Blessed is the man who loves the Lord

Lauda, lauda, laude

And walks in His ways.

Lauda, lauda, laude, 

Lauda Lauda di da di day… 

All of my days.

Music by Leonard Bernstein, Text from the Liturgy of the Roman Mass

Additional Texts by Stephen Schwartz and Leonard Bernstein

FORWARD!

Poem for Today - Saturday October 18, 2014

GOING  ONWARDS

When the thunder rumbles
Now the Age of God is dead

And the dreams we’ve clung to dying to stay young

Have left us parched and old instead….

When my spirit falters on decaying altars
And my illusions fail,

I go on right then.
I go on again.
I go on to say

I will celebrate another day ….

I go on ….

If tomorrow tumbles

And everything I love is gone

I will face regret

All my days, and yet

I will still go on … on …

Lauda, Lauda, Laude,

Lauda, Lauda di da di day …

© Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Schwarz

DAILY COMMUNION, 

DAILY MASS OF ALL OF US 

Poem for Today - Friday October 17, 2014

PLENTY

Having shared our bread,

we know that we are

no longer hungry. It is enough

that you see me for myself.

That I see you for yourself.
That we bless what we see

And do not borrow, do not use

One another. This is how we know

We are no longer hungry … that

the world is full of terror, full of beauty

and we we are not afraid to find solace here.
To be bread for each other. To love.

© Gunila Norris

I AM 

AT YOUR DOOR 

KNOCKING 

Poem for Today - October 16, 2014 - Thursday

SEARCHING

I was passionate.

filled with longing,

I searched

far and wide.
But the day

that the Truthful One

found me,

I was at home.

©  Lal Ded, 14^th Century, Kashmir

NADA

Poem for Today - October. 15, 2014 - Wednesday

PRAYER OF TERESA OF AVILA

Let nothing disturb you.

Let nothing frighten you.

All things pass.

God does not change.

Patience achieves everything.

Whoever has God lacks nothing.

God alone suffices.

© Teresa of Avila

Picture: Woman Crying by
Pablo Picasso

JUST SITTING,

JUST WATCHING

Poem for Today - October 14, 2014 - Tuesday

FIELD OF VISION

I remember this woman who sat for years

In a wheelchair, looking straight ahead

Out the window at sycamore trees unleafing

And leafing at the far end of the lane.

Straight out past the TV in the corner,

The stunted, agitated hawthorne bush,

The same small calves with their backs to wind and rain,

The same acre of ragwort, the same mountain.

She was steadfast as the big window itself,

Her brow as clear as the chrome bits of the chair.
She never lamented once and she never

Carried a spare ounce of emotional weight.

Face to face with her was an education

Of the sort you got across a well-braced gate –

One of those lean, clean, iron roadside ones

Between two whitewashed pillars, where you could see

Deeper into the country than you expected

And discovered that the field behind the hedge

Grew more distinctly strange as you kept standing

Focused and drawn in by what barred the way.

© Seamus Heaney