Monday, September 15, 2014

TWOGETHER

Poem for  Today - Wednesday - September 17, 2014

   THE TRAVELLING OUT

I wonder, since we are both travelling out,
If we may go together? Thank you.

You may be sure you will be alone
And private as though I were no one.
God knows, I do not wish to increase your burden.
Naturally, these airports, blinding cities,
And foundry lights confuse you, make you
More solitary than the sight of one lost lamp
Across a bare land promising life there—
Someone over that field alone and perhaps
Waiting for you. That used to be the way.

Feel perfectly free to choose how
You will be alone, since we are going together.
Of course, I never move, I merely hold you
In my mind like a prayer. You are my way
Of praying, and I have chosen you out of hordes
Of travellers to speak to silently, on my own.
I will be with you, with your baffled anger
Among fuming cities, with your grief
At having lost dark fields and lamplight.
It is my way of moving, or praying

Oh, not to give you someone like me,
That's all over, impossible, I go nowhere;
And besides, nothing is given, absolutely
Nothing and no one, only white sermons among
The white of a billion bulbs. No,
Sitting here behind my shutters at twilight,
I am stretching over the blazing lanes,
The dazed crowds jostled and razed
By light, only to join your mind and guide you
Gently, leading you, not, alas, to my own lamp
Across the fields of the world, or to a cozy last
Prayer of lamplight blessing the fields of the air,
But out into hordes of stars that move away
As we move, and for which you’re travelling
Prepares you to go out a little more boldly,
All alone as I am alone.

© Lucile Adler
The New Yorker Book of Poems,
pages 741 - 742

PUT IT 
IN WRITING

Poem for Today - Tuesday  - September 16, 2014


WRITING

The cursive crawl, the squared-off characters,
these by themselves delight, even without
a meaning, in a foreign language, in
Chinese, for instance, or when skaters curve
all day across the lake scoring their white
records in ice. Being intelligible,
these winding ways with their audacities
and delicate hesitations, they become
miraculous, so intimately—out there
at the pen's point or brush's tip - do world
and spirit wed. The small bones of the wrist
balance against great skeletons of stars
exactly; the blind bat surveys his way
by echo alone. Still, the point of style
is character. The universe induces
a different tremor in every hand, from the
check forger's to that of the Emperor
Hui Tsung, who called his own calligraphy
the "Slender Gold." A nervous man
writes nervously of a nervous world, and so on.

Miraculous. It is as though the world
were a great writing. Having said so much,
let us allow there is more to the world
than writing; continental faults are not
bare convoluted fissures in the brain.
Not only must the skaters soon go home;
also the hard inscription of their skates
is scored across the open water, which long
remembers nothing, neither wind nor wake.

© Howard Nemerov
The New Yorker Book of Poems,
pages 816-817
THE  ANNUNCIATION

Poem for Today - Monday -  September 15, 2014




THE CESTELLO ANNUNCIATION

The angel has already said, Be not afraid.
He’s said, The power of the Most High
will darken you. Her eyes are downcast and half closed.
And there is a long pause – a pause here and forever –

as the angel crowds her. She backs away,
her left side pressed against the picture frame.

He kneels. He's come in all unearthly innocence
to tell her of glory—not knowing, not remembering
how terrible it is. And Botticelli
gives her eternity to turn, look out the doorway, where
on a far hill floats a castle, and halfway across
the river toward it juts a bridge, not completed

and neither is the touch, angel to virgin,
both her hands held up, both elegant, one raised
as if to say stop, while the other hand, the right one,
reaches toward his; and, as it does, it parts her blue robe
and reveals the concealed red of her inner garment
to the red tiles of the floor and the red folds

of the angel's robe. But her whole body pulls away.
Only her head, already haloed, bows,
acquiescing. And though she will, she's not yet said,
Behold, I am the handmaid of the lord,
as Botticelli, in his great pity,

lets her refuse, accept, refuse, and think again.

© Andrew Hudgins, pages 106-107
in Upholding Mystery,
An Anthology of Contemporary
Christian Poetry, Edited by
David Impastato,
Oxford University Press,
New York, Oxford, 1997

Painting by Sandro Botticelli


Notes from Google:
The Annunciation, also known as the Cestello Annunciation, is a tempera painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, circa 1489-1490. It is housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence.
The picture was commissioned in 1489 by the church of the Florentine convent of Cestello which is now known as Santa Maria Maddalena de'Pazzi.
Underneath the painting on its original frame are words in Latin from St. Luke's Gospel 1:35 "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."

Sunday, September 14, 2014

THE  CROSS: 
CHECK  IT  OUT 



INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this feast of Holy Cross is, “The Cross: Check It Out.”

We have this enormous cross here inside St. John Neumann Church, Annapolis, Maryland. I understand there was some controversy when it was planted in this church: some were for it and some were against it. 

The Cross: Check it Out.

Thought: it’s here. Sit under it and see what it does for you. Better: sit under it and listen to what Jesus says to you.

If a sermon is boring – or doesn’t grab you – sit here under the tree of this cross and see what Christ hanging on the cross means to you.

If life is boring – or going wrong for you – drop into this church – or any church and sit under the tree of the cross – and hear Jesus being with you.

SITTING UNDER THE TREE

Does anyone sit under trees anymore?

Does anyone just sit there and meditate – think – lean – grow.

When we were kids we used to go to a great place called, “Bliss Park.”

It had this one big gray barked tree 2/3 up the hill. It was up there on the left as you looked up the hill and just right if you got it for your family on a Sunday afternoon. A blanket or two would be laid on under just under this tree. We would talk. We’d lay down and nap. We kids would roll down the hill in the warm weather. We’d eat neat picnic food. We’d wander to the top of the hill and then walk to this great spot that overlooked the New York Harbor. There was the Statue of Liberty. You could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan – but there was no World Trade Center yet – nor Verrazano Bridge.

When was the last time you sat or laid down under a tree.

Is it true that Isaac Newton sat there under an apple tree and when he saw one fall to the ground he wondered, why didn’t it fall up? “Eureka!” He realized the pull of this body we’re on has a greater pull than all those other bodies out there in space. He realized the reality of the Law of Gravity.

Is it true that the Buddha had had it. He tried the easy path and it got him nowhere. He tried the strict path and that got him nowhere either. So he sat there stubbornly under the Bodhi or Bo Tree till he had an answer. He sat and sat till he was enlightened. Surprise – he was. He came up with the Middle Way – the balanced way of Buddhism. And pilgrims to the major Buddhist shrines in India and Sri Lanka – will find Bodhi or Bo trees - a type of fig tree - to sit under.

When was the last time you sat or laid down under a tree?

In the 70’s I went to a Conference at the Cardinal Spellman Retreat House in Riverdale, New York, right on the Hudson River. It was given by the smartest and most read person I ever met: Tom Berry. 

Talk about long sermons. It took him years and years  of study to put his material together. Then it took him a whole weekend to present: “A New Creation Account.” It brought in all kinds of creation accounts from way, way back – as well as history, discoveries, as well as all the science up to the present day. I don’t know enough anthropology and physics and inner and outer space stuff, but I sat there amazed.

A priest whom I went with to this conference said, “Andy you’ll understand about 1% of what he’s talking about."

He was right. 

However, what I remember was Tom Berry’s opening comment.

Looking out through the clear glass sliding doors that were the wall on one side of the big conference room was a big grass lawn. If one looked further down the hill, one saw the Hudson River. 

Pausing --- standing there at the speaker’s podium – Tom Berry said, “There’s a big old oak tree at the bottom of that green lawn there. It’s been there for hundreds of years. If we all went down there and sat silently under that tree for this weekend – we’d get a lot more enlightened than we’d get sitting up here and talking.”

I saw in The New York Times years later that – that old tree died. 

And Tom Berry died as well June 1, 2009. 

He was called a geologian.

It’s not by accident that the Old Creation story in the Book of Genesis begins by talking about two trees: the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of good and evil as well.

Take and eat from the tree of life. Don’t take. Don’t eat of the tree of good and evil.

It’s not by accident that the New Creation account by Jesus has the tree of the cross. It’s the tree of life and it’s the tree of good and evil.

 TODAY’S FEAST

To understand today’s feast of the Holy Cross it’s important to pull these stories together. To understand the Cross read today’s readings again. To understand the Cross sit under it.

Sit under the cross and look up and see Jesus – and what humans did to him – cursing – spitting and crucifying him – after dragging and pushing him up that hill to die.

Under that cross were men yelling at him and throwing dice to gets his robe.

Under that cross were Mary, a few other women and John his beloved disciple.

Under that Cross we can look up at Jesus and get enlightenment. Answer evil with goodness and love. Put all in the Father’s hands – because all of life is out of our hands. Turn over and over again when others hurt us and are evil towards us – Jesus central message of love: Father forgive them because they don’t know what to do.

Under that cross we can hear today’s first reading – that the crowd was being bit by snakes – and so Moses grabbed a snake – nailed it to a pole and said, “This is what’s killing you – stay clear of them biting and poisoning you.”

That symbol became the symbol of the medical profession. Stay clear of this and this and this – all those things that are poisoning you.

That symbol became the symbol of Christians – stay clear of all those things that are killing you. Nail to the cross anger, yelling, envy, pride, and then hear from the cross: this is what’s killing you.

Under the cross you’ll get today’s second reading – that this is God – in the ultimate emptying of his Godness – to tell us how much God became us – to bring us to God. We weren’t getting that – so he suffered the ultimate emptiness dying on the cross.

Under the cross we’ll get the message of today’s gospel – that Jesus so loved the world that he died for us – that God so loved the world that he sent his son to us – that we might be saved.

CONCLUSION

How to conclude this?

Hope this is not slick or too cute.

The title of my homily is not: The Cross: don’t chuck it out.

The title or my homily is: The Cross: Check It Out.
THE CROSS 
FROM ANOTHER VIEWPOINT 

Poem for Today - September 14, 2014



CHRIST AFTER CRUCIFIXION

After they took me down I heard the winds
in a long wail skim the palm trees
and the steps fade.
The wounds
and the cross they nailed me to for the whole afternoon
did not kill me, though. And I listened: the wailing
travelled across the field between me and the city
like the rope that pulls on the ship
while it sinks to the depths. The lamentation was
like a string of light between the morning
 and the darkness in the bleak winter sky.
And then the city drowsed upon its affairs.

When mulberry and orange trees bloom,
When the village of Jaykur extends to the limits of the imagination—
when it flourishes with grass, its fragrance sings
and the suns suckle it with their light.
When even the darkness of the night turns green
the warmth touches my heart, and my blood runs in its soil.
My heart is a sun when the sun throbs light;
my heart is the earth, brings forth wheat and flowers and pure water;
My heart is the water, my heart is a stalk of wheat,
its death is resurrection: it lives in him who eats of it
in the dough which is shaped into loaves
and swells like a small breast, like the breast of life.
I died by fire: I burnt the darkness of my clay,
but the god was untouched.
I was a beginning: and in the beginning were the poor.
I died that the bread might be eaten in my name,
that they might plant me in season.
How many lives will I live? In every pit
I have grown into a future, a seed,
a generation, in every heart that has
a drop, or droplet of my blood.

When I returned and Judas saw me
his secret—he turned yellow.
He was darkened by me like a shadow, the statue of a dispirited idea
that would, he feared, reveal death in the moisture of his eyes ...

(His eyes are of rock;
with them he covers his grave from the people)
Afraid of its warmth, of never realizing it, he had told all.
`—You! or has my shadow blanched, been scattered with light?
You proceed from the world of death, but death comes once!
So said our fathers, so they taught us; can it be false?'
This he thought when he saw me, and this his glance said.

A running step, steps.
The grave will collapse under these steps.
Have they come? Who but they?
A step—another.
I place the rock on my chest.
Didn't they crucify me yesterday? Here I am in my grave.
Let them come; I am in my grave. Who knows
that I am ... who knows?
And Judas' friends, who will believe what they claim?
A step ... a step.
Here I am now naked in my dark grave.
Yesterday I was furled like doubt, like a bud;
the flowers of blood dripped under my snowy shrouds.
I was like the shadow between night and day
until I exploded my very being in a shower of treasures,
stripped it like fruits.
When I cut my pocket into swaddling clothes,
and my sleeve into a blanket
when I warmed the bones of the children one day with my flesh—
when I undressed my own wound to bandage the wounds of others,
the wall fell between God and myself.
The soldiers surprised even my wounds and the throbs of my heart:
surprised all that was not death, though in a cemetery.
They surprised me as a fruitful palm tree is surprised
by a flock of hungry birds in a deserted village.

The eyes of guns block my path.
Levelled, they plot with their fire my crucifixion—
with iron and fire: but the light of the skies,
remembrance and love are the eyes of my people.
They carry the burden for me, bedew my cross, so that how small
is that death—my death—and how big!

After they nailed me, and I turned my eyes to the city
I could barely distinguish field, wall, or cemetery.
Like aa flourishing forest, there extended
As far as the eye could see, in every domain a cross  and a sad mother
At the childbirth of the city!

[Summer 1957]

Badr Shakin al-Sayyab (1926-1964)
Pages 140-143 - in
When the Words Burn,
An Anthology of Modern
Arabic Poetry: 1945-1987,

translated by John Mikhail Asfour

Saturday, September 13, 2014

ANNAPOLIS

Poem for Today - September 13, 2014



CHESAPEAKE

I

Nature most calm is often a crisis.
I remember a bay day,
creaseless, ruffleless,
land out of sight out of mind,
when the aimlessness
of my eyes, hands, dreams, work, art
rose up in my throat and smote me,
and I cried for wind. . . .

Wind high,
bay gray and white,
the avenging angel's
enormous
wings over us:
it rained a spray of
dross cold; sails grew; boat heeled;
lungs filled with danger;
our bodies blessed and bent
to servitude, you a slave
to the tiller, I
slave to your prescience.
Lord, Lord give us clearance.

II

Lost souls haunt rivers.
In a light wind,
by moon,
they can keep you as half-wakeful
as the boat that sways always
on its anchor
back and forth,
and your light dreams
bring you up short on your body;
you rise and cry out,
"Where am I?"
The ghosts recede to shore.
Next morning, old stumps
abandoned by pioneers
are covered by
large silent birds.

This bay is not rhetorical:
Modestly
it receives its rivers,
except at Annapolis
where Severn, South, Magothy
swirl and pull off
a small naval battle.
Otherwise, patiently
receiving all tributes of waters,
it slumbers and waits
for the storms to ride across it-stretches,
for the wind to call out the changes
 that set the nun buoys nodding
and all the bells and gongs
to dire scolding.
A bay is an infold,
a withholding
between prosaic land
and cannibal ocean.

At bay, at bay!
How many a day's journey
across the whims of water
to find headway!
Lighthouse and land ho.
It's moving that counts.




© Gerta Kennedy,
The New Yorker
 Book Of Poems,
pages 116-117

Picture on Top:
"Sunrise on Spa Creek -
Annapolis, Maryland, 1993" -
pages, 118-119,
in Bringing Back The Bay,
The Chesapeake in
 the Photographs
of Marion E. Warren,
and the Voices of
 Its Peoples,
 with Mame Warren

Picture on Bottom,



"Fog on Spa Creek 1992"
page 181 -in Warren Book.


Friday, September 12, 2014

WAKE UP!

Poem For Today - September 12, 2014



QUATRAIN

I became water
     and saw myself
          a mirage
became an ocean
     saw myself a speck
          of foam
gained Awareness
     saw that all is but
          forgetfulness
woke up
     and found myself
          asleep.


(c) Binavi Bvadakhshani, 
page 95 in The Drunken
Universe, An Anthology
of Persian Sufi Poetry