Welcome to Poetry Party #74!
I suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your own poem. Scroll down and add it in the comments section below or join our Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group and post there.
Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the invitation on your blog (if you have one), Facebook, or Twitter, and encourage others to come join the party!
We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice on the ancient desert practice of asking for a word, and followed up with our Photo Party on the theme of “Give Me a Word” inspired by our invitation to let a word for 2014 choose you (here – you can still share it, although prize winners have been announced). We continue this theme in our Poetry Party this month.
Write a poem inspired by your word, something you could use as a prayer or blessing throughout the year, or just a simple reminder of how your word is inviting you to be in the year to come. In our free 12-day mini-retreat one of the suggestions was to write an acrostic poem from your word, where you write your word vertically on the page and each letter becomes the first letter for that particular line of the poem. See what form your poem wants to take!
You can post your poem either in the comment section below*or you can join our Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group (with more than 1000 members!) and post there.
*Note: If this is your first time posting, or includes a link, your comment will need to be moderated before it appears. This is to prevent spam and should be approved within 24 hours.
45 Responses
My word is Life
L–loveliness fills our glass
I–if we have eyes to see
F–for all creation speaks of God’s
E–eternal care for thee and me.
Softly
I hold my reflection in a mirror
in a room
Lit with one candle in a room
Full
of the things I love
One of the things
Myself
an odd sort of lectio divina
(more divination than anything)
i open to a psalm i fished out of the trash
to read:
the floods have lifted up, O LORD
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.
my eyes stopped on flood
like bracken on a rock
like the tree i watched —
pulled under a road, through a culvert
(the water, shoving the tree,
ripped a gash in the road
too wide for jumping.)
my heart sticks on flood
each time: i hear the creek roar
i brace myself
God is powerful
deserving of awed respect
tree
road
or water,
i /will/ be swept off my feet
i pray for the wisdom to laugh when it happens
My word was ‘envelope’
Everywhere surrounding
Nature of being
Very lover of very love
Encasing true self
Lifting, holding, comforting
Opening to new ways of seeing
Perfect presence is peace
Encompassing everything, everywhere always
My word for 2014 is ‘receive’.
How to Receive
unbrace
unfold
unclench
fists become cupped hands
waiting
in the silence
to receive
Marianne, your word, receive, and your poem spoke to me this morning as I’m healing broken bones in my foot, live alone, and have had to ask for and receive help from friends and neighbors. Very difficult for me. I’m cupping my hands to receive with grace.
No more unlucky for some
2014 is my year for hope
Health
Opportunities
Positive thinking
Ease
I step into it with lightness
This is the image that goes with the above poem. I’m not sure why it didn’t post the first time.
Seek calmness beneath
the undulating surface.
Slowly u n t a n g l e .
Be the fish that is
unaware of such things as
rightness and wrongness.
Float there for awhile
weightless in the salt water.
Soften to a l l o w.
Common 2014
Come, my dear,
Out of the pressures to be best, into the
Middle way, the
Mix
Of ebb and flow, of effective and ineffective . . .
Not outside the pale, but within the
Circle
Of
Multi-selved,
Monastic, artistic seekers of this ever-adoring, ever-challenging
One, be-
Neath it all.
As this moment passes
With luminous portent
All creation pauses to
Keenly observe the now
Experiencing exactly what is
My word for 2014 is AWAKE. For me it is a reminder to be fully awake and attentive to what is happening in the moment, to try to avoid lingering in the past or projecting into “the not yet future.” Whether I am home alone with my cat, driving my car, in conversation with someone, or participating at Mass or in prayer, I am going to make the effort to be 100% in the present moment.