~

the trees have caught fire
again with the slanting light that curves
as the sun sighs behind the mountains into the sea
that rolls through my chest,
settles with the wordless whispers
of the fleeting purity of white
foam
trapped air in water, it laughs in white
as it escapes to its origin, the sunlight
kissed air
that smooths the hair of the child
tucked into bed ten layers of years inside me
and when she laughs i forget
the rough sand so far from sea
that grinds into crevices and refuses to leave
the child grins and blows
every grain away
and every joyless word seems callous
and every black pain despairing
and every laugh is present
and every love lives
'it is no longer i who live, but Christ in me'
today i feel
well today i feel like Christ is a child
wrapped in my arms, under the folds
of a soft layered sleeve
He smells like musty flowers and warm milk
and His fist wraps around my finger
fragile Body curled trustingly
and His
Innocence
sanctifies me
who should be chosen to protect Him
and i understand
the heart of a child as the door to heaven
mother mary, pray for me
to know as you knew

"motherhood" by arianne lequay

these are the faltering words
that try to sanctify the despair i've written so fully here in the past
to remember, to show, that life is really, truly, beautiful, full, real. sometimes i get sad, and sometimes i am joyful. i am writing to show that - well - we can't always be hanging onto the past, or looking to the future. our hope comes from the reality of Christ's presence in our humanity, in every moment - in our despair and in our joy, in our hope and in our darkness, in our peace and friendship and work and play. maybe hope (this is, after all, a blog that ultimately seeks to write about hope) - maybe hope isn't about knowing that one day, in a life to come, there will be pristine joy, but about knowing that right now, right now, something lies beneath whatever we are thinking, feeling, dreaming, hoping, or despairing about - something so beautiful and radiant, that all we need is this one moment to sustain our complete existence. God hides so we will seek Him, an expert in Love. He is here. a Hope fully real, fully present, in every single moment of our existence, beneath every feeling, a Reality that sustains our Being, and the Being of every single soul we encounter today. recognize Him in you and in those around you; hope in Him, and love Him, and then you'll find joy.

shortest sentence in the bible

He wept.

in the spirit of st. francis

got this from another blog i follow, The Heart of Things... bitterly beautiful portrait of St. Francis, and our call to the poor and suffering.


THE REAL FRANCIS

There you stand, O prophet of God
Placid in the sun-drenched garden
And never in the cold dank cave
Or bleeding amidst the thorns.

There you stand, poised and sanitized
Air-brushed with the birds
Who once opened their beaks to praise their Maker
And then stood silent to hear His Holy Word.

Why do you too stay silent
Exiled to sacred niche and abandoned
Upon some plaster pillar?
You who glowed naked ashen upon the barren earth
Now need vigil light and fresh white linen?

What is the weak reason everyone loves you?
And who are you, you little wounded man
That everyone crowns your weary wet head with gold?
Are you not a lion now made mascot or lapdog?

Your bitter life has been made palatable
And burlap garb soft to the touch.
Marketed for the masses
You stand sweet and surreal upon the tattered page.

How do you feel being everyone's plastic saint?
Pulled this way and that
Like puddy shaped
and shoved into the mold of many little minds.

Everyone: old-timers and new-agers,
Left wing liberals and right wing Republicans,
Industrious Amish and lazy agnostics,
Catholic school kids and Protestant preachers;

Yes, the whole lot of us who make up life;
Communists, ecologists, vegetarian, veterinarians, silver-haired hippies and bow tied bankers,

Everyone owns you as no one knows you.

Yet God knows you, you broken tiny man.
And you know Him, do you not?
Resting in crib or burning on a cross,
Hidden behind wafer and wine and Holy Word.

So, as you now stand, pale and listless
so too my poor soul,
far from the sharp thorns and the bright snow
Where you found your Christ.

Yes, you who stumbled along Assisi's stone streets,
And wept while staggering like a drunken man,
Speak to me, a sinner, who feasts on rich fare.
Speak to me of the poor God - of GOD!


peace-

st. francis and a knockout reading trio

hey folks,

it's been awhile! per usual, i am going to be exceedingly productive writing blogs this evening, for precisely the reason that i should be preparing for a presentation and midterm next week. ah well, maybe the two can intertwine a bit (one of the many glorious blessings of being a religious studies major).

so today's the feast day of one of the coolest saints in church history (seriously) - st. francis of assisi. so his prayer was running through my head today (in a similar fashion to which it's been running through my life for the past 21 years or so)... and even if you know it, i'll retype it because i think it's kind of impossible to pray this prayer too often. read it slowly; let it sink in.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace
where there is hatred, let me sow love
where there is injury, pardon
where there is doubt, faith,
where there is despair, hope
where there is darkness, light,
and where there is sadness, joy

grant that i may not so much seek
to be consoled, as to console
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved, as to love

for it is in giving that we receive
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal Life.

how hard it is to live this out! to love, believe, forgive, hope, shine, be joyful, console, understand, and give, to die to everything we want for ourselves every single day - i know i've been doing pretty much the opposite of that for quite a while now - even while hearing the prayer run through my head i could feel myself protesting - why should i be the one to be strong? especially when, as is inevitable to happen if you love as uncompromisingly as Christ's life calls us to, the same people you are trying to love are the ones who hate you for trying to be strong or, worse, don't even notice? maybe they should be taught a lesson, i feel myself say. what's the point of excessive love? i'll withdraw, then they'll see, then they'll be sorry! (note to reader: they won't be sorry - just disillusioned. imagine if Christ decided on Holy Thursday to do the same!! how different life would be.)

there's a line somewhere in the Bible that says that when someone asks you to carry their pack for a mile, carry it for two, and by your excess in love you will hurt them - teach them a lesson, if you will. someone in one of my seminars pointed out that this is more like passive aggression, not love. but what is love? isn't it nothing more than moving another soul closer to God? didn't Christ look his torturers in the eye and openly accept it? didn't He know that one of the soldiers would cry out as He died, "surely this was the Son of God!"? what could have moved the soldier to cry out those words except for Christ's obedience, excessive acceptance of suffering with love? perhaps part of Christ's love was the knowledge that the guilt stirred up in the soldier's heart would lead to his conversion. was that passive aggression, or just a part of a fuller God-oriented love?

it's difficult to accept this teaching - every fiber of myself that doesn't love God protests against it - because it's a call to the cross. it's a call to death. and it's a call to trust, that the prayer of st. francis speaks the truth - that we will be pardoned, we will receive, and we will be resurrected.


the readings today were beautiful - the first was how Eve was taken from Adam's side, because "it is not good for man to be alone," the second reading was that Christ joins us to the Divine and the Gospel was that man cannot separate what God has joined [now that Christ is with us]. it finishes with a blessing of children. very Theology of the Body - man and woman complete each other, but are united to God through Christ in the Sacrament of Marriage, and can now never be separated... but Christ's unification itself is defined by suffering love. whew. a lot for meditation, much more than i can fit in here - and very good for my romantically-dispositioned self. here, at least, is the second reading, from Hebrews - so beautiful.

"Brothers and sisters:
He "for a little while" was made "lower than the angels, "
that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. "

[though we all die, we will never, i believe, be as alone, as isolated, as Christ in the instant before His death, in the instant before He conquered death - "Daddy, why have you abandoned me?" - we do not taste death like He did, because He conquered it, and death and Resurrection are now the same for those who consecrate themselves to God)]

"For it was fitting that he,
for whom and through whom all things exist,
in bringing many children to glory,
should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.
He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated
all have one origin.
Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them “brothers.” "


beyond words. suffering, love, equality with God, and in the context of the Sacrament of Marriage, all of these things as the living Doorway to the unification of man and woman in Christ, which no man can separate, souls joined forever, through the kind of love St. Francis writes about, only possible if given without reserve, without bitterness, without selfishness or a sense of being wronged - a senseless passionate love for everything that lives, the kind of senselessness that makes one end up nailed to a tree - and the kind of senselessness that, in the end, makes sense so perfectly that only Satan is baffled, the kind of sense that triumphs over death and opens the door to Eternity through the suffering, throbbing heart of love of Jesus Christ.

Amen!!