Advent 1 - Incarnation

In the beginning of John's Gospel we are told that the Word became Flesh and dwelled amongst us. What does that mean for us? How to we engage this Incarnate one? Dare we see others as images of the Incarnate amongst us, prompting us towards compassion and justice? Do we loose sight of following the One who came in Flesh a midst all the doctrinal statements we want to make about the Incarnate One and the Divine One who sent the Incarnation into the world?
I find these good Advent questions as we start our Advent journey, and appreciate the Reverend Dr. Philip Hewett for exposing me to the work of Edwin Muir, a Scottish poet.When reading Muir's Incarnate One (below) pay attention to the line: "The Word made flesh here is made word again".

Blessed Be,

Joel

The Incarnate One

The windless northern surge, the sea-gull's scream,

And Calvin's kirk crowning the barren brae.

I think of Giotto the Tuscan shepherd's dream,

Christ, man and creature in their inner day.

How could our race betray

The Image, and the Incarnate One unmake

Who chose this form and fashion for our sake? 

The Word made flesh here is made word again
A word made word in flourish and arrogant crook.
See there King Calvin with his iron pen,
And God three angry letters in a book,
And there the logical hook
On which the Mystery is impaled and bent
Into an ideological argument.

There's better gospel in man's natural tongue,
And truer sight was theirs outside the Law
Who saw the far side of the Cross among
The archaic peoples in their ancient awe,
In ignorant wonder saw
The wooden cross-tree on the bare hillside,
Not knowing that there a God suffered and died.

The fleshless word, growing, will bring us down,
Pagan and Christian man alike will fall,
The auguries say, the white and black and brown,
The merry and the sad, theorist, lover, all
Invisibly will fall:
Abstract calamity, save for those who can
Build their cold empire on the abstract man.

A soft breeze stirs and all my thoughts are blown
Far out to sea and lost. Yet I know well
The bloodless word will battle for its own
Invisibly in brain and nerve and cell.
The generations tell
Their personal tale: the One has far to go
Past the mirages and the murdering snow.
Edwin Muir

Is the Grass Really Greener Back There, From Which We Came?

While visiting parishioners in central Idaho one day, I drove around a corner and there were five cows munching grass through a fence. All five of them had their heads stuck through the fence and were enjoying the grass on the other side. It must have been greener. But one cow was actually outside the pasture. Her head still stuck between the rails, chomping grass from the pasture.

How many of us make decisions and change of live patterns only to later reflect back ... if only ...?

This fall / autumn, the leaves have been fantastic! So here is a fall / autumn poem from Robert Frost for you. The paths we take make all the difference, although at the time, they may look quite the same.

Blessed Be

Joel

1. The Road Not Taken  

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20

Robert Frost (1874–1963). 
Frost, Robert. Mountain Interval. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/119/. [Date of Printout]. The Road Not Taken

Prayer to a Departed Friend - John Hanna Poem

On this Father's Day, I thought it important to remember fathers who have lost a child or children. Here is a poem written by John Hanna after the death of his son.*

Blessed Be
Joel

         Prayer to a Departed Friend

O Captain, in those islands of the blest
     To which you have so lately sailed away,
Somewhere is wandering a little boy -
     Perhaps you'll find him seated by the shore,
With sad eyes gazing o'er that unknown sea,
     Perplexed that Daddy's boat does not appear.

He is my dear-loved son, who left this world
     But a few short, yet age-long months ago;
In that far land are none he knows, and I
     Am torn with thoughts of his great loneliness.
Now as you love me, Captain, seek him out,
     And give him greeting as a friend of mine.

Sit down and spin for him brave yarns
     Of ships and men and storms, and fights and loot,
Of many a land and sea your life had known.
     Then walk with him sometimes along the beach
And answer well his eager questioning
     Of bird and fish and flower, all living things.

Perchance you'll find a boat upon that strand -
     Push off with him and teach him all the lore
Of tiller, oar and sail, of wind and wave;
     He knows no fear, and joys in brave effort -
Oh, how I envy you that happy task!
     To know that you are doing this, old friend,
Will keep me keep my teeth clenched tight, eyes dry,
     And mask with smiles the pain that grips my heart.

So seek my little lad, and tell him aye
     That I will come in but a few brief years,
And am eager for the day as he.
     I ask you this for old times' sake. Amen.

~ John G. Hanna

(written shortly after the death of his son, and addressed to his own father)

* Found in John Stephen Doherty's A Ketch Called Tahiti: John G. Hanna and His Yacht Designs (International Marine Publishing Comp, 1987).

Psalm of the Ressurrection - 2nd Monday in Easter, 2012

On this second Monday in the Easter season, here is another poem by Rev. Edward Hays (Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim).

May you continue to find Resurrection abounding around you.

Blessed Be.

Joel

A Psalm of the Resurrection

Before dawn,
     the great Seder celebration having passed,
     his empty cross awaiting death's next meal,
     into the darkness of his lifeless body
     the finger of God's Spirit
     stirred in slowly spiraling circles
     as once it had moved
     over the deep and empty waters
     about to be pregnant with creation.

From the blast of the birthing
     of ten thousand galaxies,
     Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary
     and son of God,
     exploded outward from his tomb
     in radiant light and love
     to fill the earth and the whole cosmos
     with the fullness of divine life.

Paul of Tarsus penned it well
     in a letter to Ephesian firends:
     "God has put all things under Christ's feet
     and made him head of the Church, his body:
     the fullness of him
     who fills the universe in all its parts."

I look up into the Easter sky,
     beyond the limits of this small galaxy -
     far beyond the boundaries of my mind -
     into the billions of galaxies that glow
     like flaming Easter flowers
     filling the garden of the universe.

Light travels 5,787 trillion miles a year;
     and to cross, just once at the speed of light,
     this universe whose every starry body
     contains the fullness of the Risen Christ
     would take all of twenty billion years.

Oh, beyond comprehension,
     too vast for my little mind,
     is the mystery of the Resurrection,
     is the wonder of the Easter nighttime sky,
     the body of the Risen Christ,
     the whole and holy Church to which I belong.

Easter Monday, 2012

The following is a poem from Ronald Rolheiser* about Mary Magdala meeting Jesus in the garden on Easter Morning (see John's account).

Blessings of Resurrection this Easter Season.

Joel

Mary Magdala's Easter Prayer

I never suspected
   Resurrection
       and to be so painful
to leave me weeping
With joy
       to have met you, alive and smiling, outside an empty
   tomb
With regret
not because I've lost you
but because I've lost you in how I had you -
   in understandable, touchable, kissable, clingable
       flesh
       not as fully Lord, but as graspably human.

I want to cling, despite your protest
   cling to your body
cling to your, and my, clingable humanity
cling to what we had, our past.

But I know that ... if I cling
you cannot ascend and
I will be left clinging to your former self
... unable to receive your present spirit.

___
* Ronald Rolheiser, "Mary Magdala's Easter Prayer," in Forgotten Among the Lilies, p. 176 - appearing also in The Holy Longing, p. 166.

Ave, Frater - John G. Hanna Poem

Hanna's Tahiti Ketch

As it is blowing here in Blaine today, and the seagulls are gliding through the sky, I thought I'd add a bit of poetry.

John Hanna is most known for his Tahiti Ketch design. He also designed other boats, and was a writer for both MotorBoat and The Rudder, where he enjoyed stirring up controversy and hold various "fencing matches" with other designers. What may not be known (at least I didn't) was that he also wrote poetry. Below is an example I found in John Stephen Doherty's A Ketch Called Tahiti: John G. Hanna and His Yacht Designs (International Marine Publishing Comp, 1987).

Enjoy.

Blessed Be
Joel

              Ave, Frater

Around my ship, in jostling mass,
     Are hosts of seagulls flying:
They follow and cross, pursue and pass,
     Squabbling, squawking, crying.

With all the wide sea's space to use,
     They choose to crowd together;
Despite discord, conflict, abuse,
     Desiring one another.

Far up a faint black form I spy
     On quiet pinions riding -
A frigate-bird in the gray sky
     His lonely course abiding.

For him no crowding in a herd,
     No need of any other,
No wish for clacking tongue's discord -
     Oh, hail you, my brother!

~ John G. Hanna (Written at sea, January 30, 1932)

New Year's Poetry

We've got three posts today - two poems, plus this one. I ran across both of these this week, and they seemed perfect ways to start the new year. I found Marge Piercy's to be a call to come join in the work of the Kingdom, of Paradise. While Dorothy Day's reminds me to be patient, both with myself, others, and the tasks before us. We do make a difference in each others lives, and the lives of those around us, just as with each small step, we also make a difference in what we are able to accomplish. The small "bricks" add up into a beautiful cathedral.

Blessed Be

Rev. Joel

Commitment

People say, what is the sense of our small effort.
They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.
A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words, and deeds is like that.
No one has the right to sit down and feel helpless.
There's too much work to do.

~ Dorothy Day

To Be of Use

I want to be with people who submerge in the task,
Who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along,
Who stand in the line and haul in their places,
Who are not parlor generals and field deserts but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

~ Marge Piercy

The Journey ~ Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life that you could save.