Welcome to Poetry Party #76!
I select an image (*photo above by PhotoJoy Photography) and 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 image and invitation on your blog (if you have one), Facebook, or Twitter, and encourage others to come join the party! (If you repost the photo, please make sure to include the credit link below it and link back to this post inviting others to join us).
We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice with wisdom from the prophet Joel and followed up with our Photo Party on the same theme. (You are most welcome to still participate). We continue this theme in our Poetry Party this month.
The text with which we are praying this month is read every year on Ash Wednesday. “Return to me with your whole heart” are a powerful words to begin the sacred season of Lent. What if we were to imagine Lent as less about sacrifice, and more about making the great return to God. The photo above, shared by fellow monk in the world Joylynn Graham at this month’s Photo Party, shimmers with the sacredness of our great and final return to God. Holding this reality in our awareness can offer us the impetus to turn back to the Source in our lives moment by moment. The ancient monks knew that the awareness of our death, smudged on our foreheads at Ash Wednesday, has the effect of deepening our appreciation for life.
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 1300 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
To a Quilting Friend
Today we returned to the room
where we
parted years ago.
Today she showed me
the unfinished
quilts in her cedar chest.
We spoke of the same things
of years ago—
our husbands
our children
our fathers
our mothers
our friends
our homes
our land
our works
our faith.
Like the quilts in her cedar chest,
We are unfinished.
Like the quilt corners,
We are imperfect.
Learning
ever
so
slowly.
I wrote this poem, having returned to a place and relationship after a period when it seemed like we were growing apart. At the time, it seemed a sacred moment to me. I was seeing the eyes of God in my friend’s eyes, after taking a big splinter out of mine. St Thomas Aquinas’ words, “We are not perfect…but infinitely perfectible,” provided inspiration. I imagine the love we share is perfectly infinite.
Barren now in these fleeing days of winter
The specter of death is overcome
By the rising SON
New life bursts forth in tender green
Love this: so to the point!!
I wonder if this piece would work for someone who has not seen the photograph?
I do like it though and feel it expresses something authentic for me. What do you think/feel?
RETURN
I am eternal and full of light,
Return to me with your whole heart
In the meadow of my life
pale fingerprints are pressed
recalling gravestones;
marks of all my failures,
my unfulfilled intentions.
I am eternal and full of light,
Return to me with your whole heart
The bare branches of my winter faith,
like filigree against the sky,
are hard and cold,
the wind blows through.
I am eternal and full of light,
return to me with your whole heart
Is this horizon
the limit of my life
or just a line drawn through,
another marker, not an end?
I am eternal and full of light,
Return to me with your whole heart
I offer you my whole heart
with all its wounds and weeping,
with all its joys and loving;
I return with gladness,
to you, my home and origin.
21 March 2014
I happen to think one would not have to have seen the photograph for this piece of poetry to ‘work’………..Beautiful.
Thanks Carolyn. Glad you liked it. XO
Stenciled against the setting sun
My heart
Like the black etching
Of the trees
Hears the whisper
‘come back to me’
It does not matter
If the body is dead
The spirit cries
‘come back to me’
Beneath the tombstone
The lifeless corpse
A gentle reminder
Of life at bay
‘come back to me’
The dimming light
And outstretched rays
Send a message
Of an eternal embrace
‘come back to me’
The sunlight of the spirit
Is warm, loving and beautiful
God Calling Youth
Excited living
Much to learn and much to do
No time for Spirit
Busy-ness brings pain
Pride attempted solutions
No time for Spirit
Admitted failure
Spirit able to break through
Returning to God.