Lowly (poem)

The spinach is finally growing!
You can see the leaves sticking out
like lengua del rez on a styrofoam carton
and already with holes, where roley poleys, ladybugs, and perhaps scorpions have trespassed.
Correction--it's always been growing,
just

slowly

like
a cocoon becoming a butterfly (or
so I've heard) or
a bus ride home when you've given up walking.

Only, Popeye would not for one second think of eating a butterfly

Song for the Dawn (poem)

Like the sunflowers in our side yard, I want to face the morning sun
without a blink, not shrinking in the wide mouth of a gun.
I want to drink the golden air when the music has begun,
plucking out my yellow fingers slowly, one by one
from this branch that was a withered worm when the dry spell had been spun,
from these fists that will be faces by the time the song is done.

Thought: Mourning and Praying for the World

During Bible study tonight, Pastors Steve and Chris asked us to mourn and pray for the world. This is what we are called to do as Christians, since we are a "chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation" (1 Peter 2:9): just as the role of priests is to intercede for the community, the role of Christians is to lift up the world in prayer to God.

We mentioned the tsunami in Japan; revolutions in the Middle East; violence in Libya; poverty and human trafficking in the Philippines and around the world; and more. Then we prayed for the world.

Our discussion and prayer reminded me of Eugene Peterson's exploration of the word "liturgy" in his book Eat This Book:

It is useful to reflect that the word "liturgy" did not originate in church or worship settings. In the Greek world it referred to public service, what a citizen did for the community. As the church used the word in relation to worship, it kept this "public service" quality--working for the community on behalf of or following orders from God. As we worship God, revealed personally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our Holy Scriptures, we are not doing something apart from or away from the non-Scripture-reading world; we do it for the world--bringing all creation and all history before God, presenting our bodies and all the beauties and needs of humankind before God in praise and intercession, penetrating and serving the world for whom Christ died in the strong name of the Trinity.

"Harlem" by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?


Romans 8:22-25

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

"Psalm for the January Thaw," by Lucy Shaw

Blessed be God for thaw, for the clear drops
that fall, one by one, like clocks ticking, from
the icicles along the eaves. For shift and shrinkage,
including the soggy gray mess on the deck
like an abandoned mattress that has
lost its inner spring. For the gurgle
of gutters, for snow melting underfoot when I
step off the porch. For slush. For the glisten
on the sidewalk that only wets the foot sole
and doesn’t send me slithering. Everything
is alert to this melting, the slow flow of it,
the declaration of intent, the liquidation.

Glory be to God for changes. For bulbs
breaking the darkness with their green beaks.
For moles and moths and velvet green moss
waiting to fill the driveway cracks. For the way
the sun pierces the window minutes earlier each day.
For earthquakes and tectonic plates—earth’s bump
and grind—and new mountains pushing up
like teeth in a one-year-old. For melodrama—
lightning on the sky stage, and the burst of applause
that follows. Praise him for day and night, and light
switches by the door. For seasons, for cycles
and bicycles, for whales and waterspouts,
for watersheds and waterfalls and waking
and the letter W, for the waxing and waning
of weather so that we never get complacent. For all
the world, and for the way it twirls on its axis
like an exotic dancer. For the north pole and the
south pole and the equator and everything between.

"Advent," by Thomas Merton

Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,
Skies, and be perfect!
Fly vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,
And disappear.
You moon, be slow to go down,
This is your full!

The four white roads make off in silence
Towards the four parts of the starry universe.
Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth.
We have become more humble than the rocks,
More wakeful than the patient hills.

Charm with your stainlessness these nights in Advent, holy spheres,
While minds, as meek as beasts,
Stay close at home in the sweet hay;
And intellects are quieter than the flocks that feed by starlight.

Oh pour your darkness and your brightness over all our solemn valleys,
You skies: and travel like the gentle Virgin,
Toward the planets' stately setting,

Oh white full moon as quiet as Bethlehem!