Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Good Friday, Holy Week, Lent, lenten journey, pilgrimage, poetry, prayer, wh vanstone
Drained is love in making full;
Bound in setting others free;
Poor in making many rich;
Weak in giving power to be.
- WH Vanstone
Good Friday:
torture, suffering, execution, death, sacrifice, love
and a reminder that the spiritual is the political.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Holy Week, Lent, lenten journey, passion, pilgrimage, poetry
Suddenly
that moment of unsought grace
exhausted stress departing
moving into depth
experience of
Passion.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Holy Week, Lent, lenten journey, passion, pilgrimage, poetry, prayer
At the moment of consecration
the priest’s fingers were ingrained with oil
from mending a puncture.
So much more
than purity of clean withdrawal.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Holy Week, justice, Kingdom of God, Lent, lenten journey, passion
Some questions for Holy Week and life beyond it:
Facing up to
the time of difficulty
the time of pain
the time of suffering
Is it really the witness of our lives
that love is stronger than hate
life is stronger than death?
that the world can be remade?
Do we have the capacity
to live generously, humbly
and with the imagination required of us?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Adrienne Rich, divisions of labour, feminism, feminist spirituality, Lent, lenten journey, poetry, politics
It is with great sadness that we learn of the death of Adrienne Rich, the great American poet. There are obituaries here and here. There is a necessary fusion of poetry and politics in her voice and there is no one like her in feminist spirituality.
Divisions of Labour
The revolutions wheel, compromise, utter their statements:
a new magazine appears, mastheaded with old names,
an old magazine polishes up its act
with deconstructions of the prose of Malcolm X
The women in the back row of politics
are still licking thread to slip into the needle’s
eye, trading bones for plastic, splitting pods
for necklaces to sell to cruise-ships
producing immaculate First Communion dresses
with flatiron and irresolute hot water
still fitting the microscopic golden wires
into the silicon chips
still teaching, watching the children
quenched in the crossfire alleys, the flashflood gullies
the kerosene flashfires
- the women whose labour remakes the world
each and every morning
. I have seen a woman sitting
between the stove and the stars
her fingers singed from snuffing out the candles
of pure theory Finger and thumb: both scorched:
I have felt that sacred wax blister my hand
- Adrienne Rich
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Lent, lenten journey, pilgrimage, poetry, the wasteland, TS Eliot
I’ve just been listening to a mesmerizing reading of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland by Eileen Atkins and Jeremy Irons on BBC Radio 4. The link to it on the website is here where you can listen again. If you can, read it this Lent (click here)
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: crow's theology, Lent, lenten journey, pilgrimage, poetry, ted hughes
The pilgrimage through life can take us through some very difficult places. It is important to face these with honesty, truth and love. Here is a poem from Ted Hughes. While I don’t agree with his conclusion, he faces things and this journey is of absolute importance.
Crow’s Theology
Crow realized God loved him-
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved.
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.
And he realized that God spoke Crow-
Just existing was His revelation.
But what Loved the stones and spoke stone?
They seemed to exist too.
And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded?
And what loved the shot-pellets
That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows?
What spoke the silence of lead?
Crow realized there were two Gods-
One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bernardino de laredo, franciscans, francisco de osuna, glasshampton, jean vanier, John of the Cross, Lent, lenten journey, pilgrimage, prayer, retreats, spanish mystics, teresa of avila
I’ve been away on retreat for the past week at Glasshampton Monastery, giving me a much needed space for prayer and reflection in the build up to Holy Week and Easter. Thanks to Br Nicholas Alan, I’ve discovered the sixteenth century Spanish Franciscan mystical writers Francisco de Osuna and Bernardino de Laredo who in many ways paved the way for Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. I’ve been slowly reading and praying Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabetwith it’s teaching on the prayer of recollection. Maybe some quotes from this once I’ve pondered and read more.
In the meantime, this from Jean Vanier:
In L’Arche and in Faith and Light, we are beginning to see the truth of St Paul’s words about the choice of God – that God chooses the weak, the foolish, the lowly and the despised. This does not mean that God has not chosen others who are wise and strong. It means that Jesus, the God of love, came to give himself to those who feel lonely and pushed aside, and who cry out for love, who are open and vulnerable to love, who let themselves be led by love. Jesus cannot give himself to those who are closed in on themselves and only want ideas about God. The wise and rich must leave their securities, and their need for temporal and spiritual power and wealth, in order to discover Jesus, the lover. They must recognise their needs and poverty enough to open the doors of their hearts to receive him, to be led and taught by him.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Lent, lenten journey, pilgrimage, poetry, poverty, roberto sosa, the poetry foundation
I’ve found this poem by the Honduran poet Roberto Sosa, and translated by Spencer Reece, on the Poetry Foundation website. You can read some notes about it here
The Poor
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Lent, lenten journey, pilgrimage, prayer, Thomas Merton
A prayer of Thomas Merton:
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
And the fact that I think I am following
your will does not mean
that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire
in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this, you will lead me
by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death,
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.
