Tuesday, May 27, 2014

MAY DAY  

Poem for Today - May 27, 2014

SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

© William Shakespeare

Monday, May 26, 2014

HONEST  HUMOR 
HELPS  EVERY  RELATIONSHIP 

Poem for Today - May 26, 2014




You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

LITANY

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine. 


© Billy Collins

Sunday, May 25, 2014

I  LOVE  A  GOOD MYSTERY


INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “I Love A Good Mystery.”

Have you ever said that to anyone in your life?

“I love a good mystery.”

JIM HOLT

I was driving along in my car  - on Thursday afternoon – listening to the radio – sort of spaced out – thinking about St. Mary’s High School graduation - that took place that morning. Once more it was a wonderful moment – in a beautiful setting – the baccalaureate mass here in this church and then the graduation down on the lawn on the edge of Spa Creek.

Still driving - I woke up when I caught on CBC - Radio-Canada – it’s just like NPR – an interview with Jim Holt – about a book he wrote in 2012 – entitled, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story.

Never heard of him - nor his book. It’s non-fiction – yet it’s a mystery – about the great mysteries of life – especially whether there is a God. I’ve been thinking about that radio interview for the past few days. Evidently, I love a mystery.

The interview was fascinating, interesting, and challenging. I really took notice – I really started listening – when he said he was born Catholic and went to Catholic school – but somewhere along the line – the answers he was getting – to his big life question – were not answering his question – and he dropped out of our church. As priest I’d obviously heard  that.

He said that he discovered the Existentialist Philosophers in high school; Sartre and Heidegger – in particular. I didn’t read them till the last two years of college – and then in the major seminary.

Jim Holt said he was floored by something Heidegger wrote – that the deepest question is: “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

He said that question hit him – a high school kid – and hit him hard and was in the back and front of his mind ever since.

That comment on Thursday afternoon on the car radio – hit me as he began describing what he was thinking about much of his life.  

Why is there something? Anything? Why is there me and you and this great big universe we find ourselves in?

He said that if our mom and dad didn’t make love – when their love making made us – the person I am  would  not exist. A different sperm – maybe a different egg – would have made another person – but not me.

I’m not writing things down while I’m driving – but what I heard - was something - I wish I could have written down. Hence this sermon. You’re my radio audience. Fasten your seat belts.

I was hearing some fascinating comments.

Jim Holt added  - that there might have been – say 50 billion people so far – on this planet – but how many ghost people are there – those who never existed – out there – as nothing.

I think he then paused and said something like, “I hit the lottery. I exist.”

That hit me. Thank you mom and dad.

Wow 74 years of me so far.

I exist. I am somebody. I am not nothing – even though like everybody I’ve experienced yawns and people walking away from me in the middle of a story – or their eyes checking the rest of the room while I babble – and not just in church.

Still like everybody, I’m somebody. Then again, I smile when I say that, because I like one of Emily Dickinson’s poems – Poem # 288

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – Too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! They’d advertise  - you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

I’m somebody. I exist. I have a name! I’m not a nobody. I’m nothing special, but I am somebody – to somebody – to two people for starters – my mom and dad – then to my 2 sisters and my brother.

Then there’s marriage – at least my fantasy of marriage – or the hope in every marriage – that this other person knows and loves me.

I think about these things – therefore I exist.

I prefer to talk Descartes that way.

I am also a believer in God – so I add, “Thank you God – for the gift of life – for being Someone – not a nothing – who helped – along with my mom and dad – I believe  - in the creation of me – that I was and am - a wanted one.”

Jim Holt, the fellow I heard on the radio, didn’t seem to think like that – at least I was hearing him – and how else can hear another – but as each us hears – in our own unique way.

Jim Holt went around the world and talked to a handful of thinkers – important – thinkers -  philosophers – scientists – to get answers to his most fundamental question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It’s Heidegger’s question – but it became his question.

That radio interview - I was listening to - while driving this past Thursday - triggered a memory and a moment from my first course in philosophy – when Father Joseph Colleran – who ended working here in Annapolis with the poor. One day he said the following, “I going to write on the board, the shortest poem ever written. It’s only two words – and it sums up the whole of Existentialist Philosophy.”

 And he wrote on the blackboard:

“I
Why?”

I understood very little in our two years of philosophy, but I never forgot that. And I know years later I found myself mentioning that moment in sermons and then saying that I wrote another poem – adding - that  it too is only 2 words - and it too rhymes and it too - asks another of life’s biggest questions:

“You
Who?

There they are:  two big mysteries; two of life’s biggest questions.

I
Why

You
Who

That radio program the other day triggered all this – and Jim Holt told about by name and personality and peculiarities the different philosophers and scientists that he traveled to interview and study. His book is a summary of what he came up with.

I didn’t read his book yet – but what I heard, and what I tracked down yesterday while looking up his stuff on line and reading a lot of stuff by him and about him,  I realize I have been hearing  and reading about down through the years – plus some new stuff.

I wondered if he had read or why didn’t he visit, Hans Kung – who deals with a lot of what he was dealing with in his big fat 839 page book, Does God Exist?

What I heard – what I knew - when I read Hans Kung’s book – and while I listened to this interview with Jim Holt - was that I know very little about quantum physics, string theory, and known and unknown scientists, teachers, etc. etc. etc. Jim Holt mentioned in his interview the names of some key people he met – and their take on life.  Some had answers; some had questions. Some believed in God; some didn’t.

I’m happy to be able to say that I learned a long time ago the message from the Talmud – “Teach thy tongue to say, ‘I do not know.’”

It reminded me - of many a moment  - I stood in the doorway of  big library and seeing all those books – I’ve said, “I know nothing.”

It reminded me of a thousand moments I stopped to look up at the night sky and see so many stars  - and realized - I know nothing. I love this church with its stars on the blue sky ceiling – but I love the night sky far better.

It reminded me of a thousand moments - I have been stopped by beauty: living 7 years – in in an Atlantic oceanfront  – retreat house - in Long Branch New Jersey, backpacking in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado – as well as the White Mountains in New Hampshire, living on Lac La Belle in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, living 14 years just 200 yards from the Hudson River,  giving talks in a retreat house in the desert just outside of Tucson, Arizona, snorkeling in the Virgin Islands when working down there once giving some talks – great job – and they paid for it. Life is good.  The world, the earth, the universe is beautiful.

So when it comes to God, I wonder at times why did God create the Grand Canyon and the Grand Cayman’s – while I remember Woody Allen’s comment: “God created the world, except certain parts of New Jersey.”

So I wonder why the 13 year old gets gunned down – and why Hitler lived.

I wonder what in the world is it with the faces of certain types of dogs and monkeys.

So  – some of us believe God is the Creator.

All of us know there are things around us – some we like, some we don’t like, some we wonder about.  And we know they are not nothing.  So we ask at times: “Why? Why? Why?”

Then there are all those wonderful “you’s” – - all those people whom we meet in our lives.  I consider that one of the best gifts of being a priest.

I remember hearing on TV – William Sloan Coffin [1924-2006] – a famous Protestant minister. He was being interviewed. One question he was asked was, “What’s the best part of being a minster?” Without a moment’s hesitation, he must have been asked the question before, or he had thought about it a lot, he answered, “Oh – sitting with someone – one to one – and they invite me into the secret garden of their soul.”

So if Jim Holt asked me his question, I’d say all of the above and say, “I believe in God.”

I’d say, “I have my questions – my wonderings – my prayers – but especially my prayers of thanksgiving – because I see the somethings that are – more than the nothings that are not.”

I’d say, “When I was younger, my prayers were more asking prayers – but for the past 20 or 30 years – they have become more and more prayers of thanksgiving.”

As to suffering and sorrow – horror and war – shootings and craziness – I assume that they are not nothing.

So I am aware that philosophers talk about The Problem of Evil.

I am forever thankful for  a paper I once read by the philosopher, Jacques Maritain – entitled the Problem of Good. Ever since reading that article, if someone hits me with the problem of evil – I like to add, “But what about the Problem of Good?”

TODAY’S READINGS

Did you notice the following comment in today’s second reading: “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence ….

I hope I’m did that in this homily.

I noticed in today’s readings that we Christians bring Christ into this question that Jim Holt is asking.

It’s a shame that he dropped out of the family a long time ago – that what he was hearing in church and Catholic school – did not answer his existential question – the question that Martin Heidegger asked,

By dropping into a Catholic Church I would hope he would hear what today’s gospel and first reading are telling us: Jesus. Experience the existence of Jesus. He is somebody.

I would hope he would hear that Jesus – one of the 3 persons in God – now that’s a mystery – came down and lived this life on this earth.

He ended up being violently killed because part of being us – the mystery of us – is that we were gifted with the gift of freedom – that life and love would be boring – meaningless - without freedom – that the other person or persons doesn’t have to love us – or be nice to us – but rather they can hurt us – and kill us or what have you. And secondly, this person, this second person in God – who became one of us – loved people, healed people, touched people – embraced children, talked and embraced women – something not to be done – even back then - in public in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean. He reached out to all. Each in the all was somebody – and he knew if they even touched the hem of his garment in a crowd.  He loved bread and wine, the birds of the air, the flowers of the fields, alone time in the desert and in the mountains.

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “I Love A Mystery.” 

I love that I have been created in mystery. I celebrate that I am someone – not nothing – someone who spends time and thought and prayer with my two questions: 

                I 
               Why? 

               You 
               Who?



In fact, I like those 2 questions better than Jim Holt’s life quest to answer Heidegger’s question:  “Why is there something rather than nothing?” 
MARRIAGE

Poem for Today - May 25, 2014



BECAUSE

Because the night you asked me,
the small scar of the quarter moon
had healed — the moon was whole again;
because life seemed so short;
because life stretched before me
like the darkened halls of nightmare;
because I knew exactly what I wanted;
because I knew exactly nothing;
because I shed my childhood with my clothes—
they both had years of wear left in them;
because your eyes were darker than my father’s;
because my father said I could do better;
because I wanted badly to say no;
because Stanley Kowalski shouted “Stella…;”
because you were a door I could slam shut;
because endings are written before beginnings;
because I knew that after twenty years
you’d bring the plants inside for winter
and make a jungle we’d sleep in naked;
because I had free will;
because everything is ordained;
I said yes.


© Linda Pastan

Saturday, May 24, 2014

PAIN

Poem for May 24, 2014


ARABIC

(Jordan, 1992)

The man with laughing eyes stopped smiling
to say, “Until you speak Arabic,
you will not understand pain.”

Something to do with the back of the head,
an Arab carries sorrow in the back of the head
that only language cracks, thrum of stones

weeping, grating hinge on an old metal gate.
“Once you know,” he whispered, “you can enter the room
whenever you need to. Music you heard from a distance,

the slapped drum of a stranger’s wedding,
wells up inside your skin, inside rain, a thousand
pulsing tongues. You are changed.”

Outside, the snow had finally stopped.
in a land where snow rarely falls,
we had our days grow white and still.

I thought pain had no tongue. Or every tongue
at once, supreme translator, sieve. I admit my
shame. To live on the bank of Arabic, tugging

its rich threads without understanding
how to weave the rug … I have no gift.
The sound, but not the sense.

I kept looking over his shoulders for someone else
to talk to, recalling my dying friend who only scrawled
I can’t write.  What good would any grammar have been

to her then?  I touched his arm, held it hard,
which sometimes you don’t do in the Middle East,
and said, I’ll work on it, feeling sad

for his good strict heart, but later in the slick street
hailed a taxi by shouting Pain! And it stopped
in every language and opened its doors.

© Naomi Shihab Nye (1952 - )

From Red Suitcase, © 2000

Friday, May 23, 2014

POETRY

Poem for Today - May 23, 2014

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

Then begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

© Billy Collins.


Thursday, May 22, 2014

INTO THE WOODS


Poem for Today - May 22, 2014


THE FOREST LAST DAY


death comes at the end of the chain saw
with spears of shrieks that split the air and red of the sun
biting into  the flesh of wood
that is shocked by the sudden pain and alien din.
its world overturns all, strange as fainting
sap flowing, its essence denying the steel’s
base and supporting roots trembling
In its canopy birds will play
its air made fragrant by the essence of the forest
the sky is witness with clear eyes.

fallen is the cengal
  fallen is the meranti
    fallen is the merbau
      fallen is the pulai
fallen is the seraya
   fallen is the nyatuh
            fallen is the resak
fallen is the halban
                       fallen is the nibung
                          fallen is the rattan

a family of trees aged by the centuries
the beautiful and great lying in the shadow

with a presence in the root’s fibers and shoot’s sway.
heat rushes into the air tunnel, existence is scalded.

the wheel of nature turns slowly
listening to the rhythm of the season and the sun
With a sense of presence in the roots and the sway of the shoots

after the death shatter and scatter of roots
heat rushes into the tunnel, searing existence.

morning-purple flowers fall
as red as cliffs, as white as cloud, as brown as trunks.
buds and fruits on heavy branches fall
lire dotted near the stem or full with the seasons
a universe of colors falls
a hundred stripes of green painting the leaves' personalities

the moon falls, caught by the branches
as light that sketches difference,
morning falls, the afternoon and the night.
with the rustle, tenderness drips from shoots
the secret mist of nature evaporates
the frame of balance is broken, since trees became earth
the quiet beauty filtered by light fades away,
leaves are dumb, branches speechless, no song, no echo
no deer, no baboon, no elephant herd
no pulse of mouse deer’s bleat,  no question.

the full epic of the forest
is ended by a convoy of lorries with tyres of concrete,
a gang of paid lumberjacks who wear no pity in their eyes.

and a bloated logger
who stands on the red desiccated desert
our future.

© Muhammad Haji Salleh -  
Translated from the Malay

 by the author