Seasons of the Soul: Ash Wednesday 2008

THE LONG WATCH

I draw aside to-day:
into the quiet, the reflection
of the pool of life.

I watch the disturbance,
the stone of my being
cast into the timeless pool…

ripples moving outward
from the centre
of the sunken stone…

circular disturbances
of small circumference
enlarging to a fading edge.

The rippling of my life
is energy into stillness
moving beyond its entry point.

The ripples, equilibrium disturbed.
The still centre sinks
under the surface.

Rippling circular to centre.
Never a straight line,
never trajectory altered.

The disturbance continues
outward…
Until, far from its centre,
it ceases.

Brigid O’Carroll Walsh
Ash Wednesday 2008
6 February 2008
© 2008

Prophets of a future not our own....

Simon Barrow

Simon Barrow has to be one of the busiest - and most talented - people around. He is Co-Director of Ekklesia (who has long been linked from this blog). I am indebted to Simon and his blog, faithinsociety, for referring me to the wonderful thoughts of Oscar Romero expressed below. His thoughts seem so fitting for the sort of work this blog tries to do. The thoughts expressed here are frequently uncomfortable for mainstream people - including mainstream Christians. But seeking justice where there is none is never comfortable. Speaking out for the marginalised is never welcome when people are seeking only to make themselves and their own comfortable.

Long ago, a journalist named Finley Peter Dunne referred to comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Miss Eagle thinks that this is what Christians are - or should be - about. In fact, it should be what thinking people who care about humanity are about. This blog tries - but, as Romero points out, the job is never done. What is being built here is not the work of a master builder. Only the Master Builder can complete it.

Ab. Oscar Romeo, Martyr

A FUTURE NOT OUR OWN

A prayer/poem by Archbishop Oscar Romero(martyred, 14 March 1980)

It helps, now and then, to step back

and take the long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of

the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.

Nothing we do is complete,

which is another way of saying

that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the church's mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything

and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something,

and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,

an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,

but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders,

ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Leunig: The path to your door

Michael Leunig is one of Australia's great cartoonists. Michael is a spiritual man and insightful in his art, his text, his comment. Miss Eagle is currently listening to Billy the Rabbit which the gifted Gyan has set to music. The CD comes beautifully packaged with a little book of the poems which have been set to music. Here is the last, but not least:

The Path to your Door
The path to your door
Is the path within:
Is made by animals,
Is lined by flowers,
Is lined by thorns,
Is stained with wine,
Is lit by the lamp of sorrowful dreams:
Is washed with joy,
Is swept by grief,
Is blessed by the lonely traffic of art:
Is known by heart,
Is known by prayer,
Is lost and found,
Is always strange,
The path to your door.

Lasting values: the pearl of great price

The topic of ethics is to the fore in Australian public life these days. Time for a reality check, Miss Eagle thinks.


The Hope Pearl, a 450-carat natural pearl that was owned by nineteenth-century gem collector Henry Phillip Hope. Loaned by Christie's. (Chip Clark / Smithsonian) Click image to enlarge.

The Pearl.

Matthew 13: 45



I know the ways of Learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the press, and make it run;
What reason has from nature borrowed,
Or of it self, like a good housewife, spun
In laws and policy; what the stars conspire,
What willing nature speaks, what forced by fire;
Both th' old discoveries, and the new-found seas,
The stock and surplus, cause and history:
All these stand open, or I have the keys:
Yet I love thee.

I know the ways of Honor, what maintains
The quick returns of courtesy and wit:
In vies of favors whether party gains,
When glory swells the heart, and molding it
To all expressions both of hand and eye,
Which on the world a true-love-knot may tie,
And bear the bundle, wheresoe'er it goes:
How many drams of spirit there must be
To sell my life unto my friends or foes:
Yet I love thee.

I know the ways of Pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The propositions of hot blood and brains;
What mirth and music mean; what love and wit
Have done these twenty hundred years, and more:
I know the projects of unbridled store:
My stuff is flesh, not brass; my senses live,
And grumble oft, that they have more in me
Than he that curbs them, being but one to five:
Yet I love thee.

I know all these, and have them in my hand:
Therefore not sealéd, but with open eyes
I fly to you, and fully understand
Both the main sale, and the commodities;
And at what rate and price I have your love;
With all the circumstances that may move:
Yet through these labyrinths, not my groveling wit,
But your silk twist let down from heaven to me,
Did both conduct and teach me, how by it
To climb to thee.
George Herbert

Peril of hope

This poem, by Robert Frost, is because my thoughts are with Denis and his challenge.

PERIL OF HOPE

It is right in there

Betwixt and between

The orchard bare

And the orchard green,

When the boughs are right

In a flowery burst

Of pink and white,

That we fear the worst.

For there's not a clime

But at any cost

Will take that time

For a night of frost.

Howard of The Overflow

This revised version of Clancy of the Overflow has been sent toMiss Eagle by her good friend,

Professor Noel Loos formerly of James Cook University.

(With apologies to A.B. 'Banjo' Paterson and to Clancy.

If you wish to pass this on please acknowledge,

hat tip and/or link to this post)

I had written him a letter, which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him at the wheat board, years ago.

He was chairman when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him
Just on spec, to make the point that "Howard doesn't want to know".

And an e-mail came directed, not entirely unexpected (And I think the same was written in some Middle Eastern bar).

'Twas his CEO who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:"Trevor Flugge's gone to Baghdad, and we don't know where he are.

"But when he left Australia, he was going to meet with Alia,
"A trucking mob in Jordan, who were keen to grease the wheels.

"For 10 percent commission, they could swing Saddam's permission
"To get our wheat accepted; it's the mother of all deals.

"But I guarantee, Prime Minister, that there's nothing at all sinister.

"The chaps at DFAT told us that the sums looked quite okay.

"When you're selling wheat in billions, what's a quick 300 million?"

If it keeps the Nationals happy, it's a tiny price to pay.

"Sitting here at Kirribilli, I've been thinking, willy-nilly,
That it's somehow reminiscent of the children overboard:

But I can handle Rudd and Beazley, as I always do, quite easily
By endlessly protesting that there's nothing untoward.

I'll tell Bush next time I meet him at The White House, when I greet him,
That I'm sure he'll understand about the wheat board's quid pro quo.

He'll forgive this minor error in the global war on terror
When I look him in the eye and tell him Howard didn't know.

Zhivago 2 - Mary Magdalene, a true apostle

Mary Magdalen by He Qi, China

Miss Eagle is always stunned at how people view Mary Magdalene - and the extremes of those views to the extent that one has to wonder if they are talking about the same person. What has always peeved Miss Eagle though is her own view that the capital 'C' church has been so easily dismissive of Mary. Mary was there with the twelve but is never considered an apostle.

Yet Mary, in womanly fashion, provided nurture and resources for the work of Jesus. She made so much so possible. But above all where Miss Eagle is peeved to the limit is that Mary Magdalene was the first bearer of the good news of the resurrection, yet for 2000 years the capital 'C' church - with only very recent exceptions - has forbidden women the preaching of the good news officially within the its services. For Miss Eagle, Mary Magdalene is a true Apostle. She resourced the ministry of Jesus. She was constant during his crucifixion and did not go to pieces or to flight like the majority of the male Apostles. She was there to discover the empty tomb. In fact, that's the thing. She was there. She was constant. She was there for the action and there to pick up the pieces. A truly female story. One that many men never get!

MARY MAGDALENE
II

Before the Festival comes the spring cleaning;
Away from the crowd,
With myrrh from a little pail
I wash your most pure feet.

I feel for the sandals and cannot find them.
I see nothing through my tears
And the strands of my hair
Cover my eyes like a veil.

I have planted your feet on the hem of my skirt, Jesus.
I have watered them with my tears, I have wound them round
With a string of beads from my neck,
I have cloaked them in my hair.

I see the future in detail
As though you had stopped it.
At this moment I am able to prophesy
With the foresight of a Sibyl.

To-morrow the veil of the temple will be torn,
We will huddle together in a little group, apart
And the earth will sway under our feet,
Perhaps out of pity for me.

The columns of the guards will re-form
And the horsemen will ride away.
Like a windspout in a storm, the cross above my head
Will strain towards the sky,

And I will fall at its feet,
Silent and dazed biting my lips.
Your arms will spread out to the ends of the cross
To embrace too many.

For whom in all the world
Is your embrace so wide,
For whom so much torment,
So much power?

In all the world
Are there so many souls?
So many lives?
So many villages, rivers and woods?

Those three days will pass
But they will push me down into such emptiness
That in the frightening interval
I shall grow up to the Resurrection.

From Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak translated from the Russian by Max Hayward and Manya Harari. The Harvill Press, London, 1996

Zhivago 1 - Remembrance, bread, wine, friends.

At Jesus's last meal with His friends
he asked us to do what He did
and remember Him with bread, wine, and friends.

Miss Eagle fell in love with Boris Pasternak at the age of 17. She read his most famous work, Dr Zhivago - a wonderful novel whose prose reads like sheer poetry. This very Russian story covers the Russia of World War I and the Revolution. It is a novel of great spirituality reflecting the Orthodox beliefs that permeate, in spite of the efforts of Lenin and Stalin et alia, the world of eastern Europe. Tucked away in the back of the novel, under the title Zhivago's Poems, is a collection or cycle of 25 poems. Miss Eagle asks you to make yourself quiet and comfortable and take this poem from that cycle as a meditation for this day of remembrance, Holy Thursday.

GETHSEMANE
From Zhivago’s Poems

The turn of the road was lit
By the unconcerned shimmer of distant stars.
The road circled the Mount of Olives;
Beneath it flowed the Kedron.

The field tailed off
Into the Milky Way.
Grey-haired olive trees tried to walk the air
Into the distance.

Across the way was a vegetable garden.
Leaving his disciples outside the enclosure,
He said to them: ‘My soul is sorrowful unto death,
Stay here and watch with me.’

Unresisting he renounced
Like borrowed things
Omnipotence and the power to work miracles;
Now he was mortal like ourselves.

The night was a kingdom of annihilation,
Of non-being,
The whole world seemed uninhabited,
And only this garden was a place for the living.

He gazed into the black abyss,
Empty, without beginning or end.
Sweating blood, he prayed to his Father
That this cup of death should pass him by.

Having tamed his agony with prayer
He went out through the garden gate.
There, overcome by drowsiness,
The disciples lay slumped in the grass.

He woke them: ‘God has granted you to live in my time,
And you loll about like this…
The hour of the Son of Man has struck,
He will deliver himself into the hands of sinners.’

Hardly had he spoke when from who knows where
A rabble of slaves and thieves appeared
With torches and knives
And in front of them Judas with his traitor’s kiss.

Peter resisted the murderers,
Struck off an ear with his sword.
‘Steel cannot decide a quarrel’, he heard:
‘Put back your sword in its scabbard.

‘Could not my Father send a host
Of winged legions to defend me?
Then no hair of my head would be touched,
The enemy would scatter and leave no trace.

‘But the book of life has reached the page
Which is the most precious of all holy things.
What has been written must be fulfilled.
Let it be so. Amen.

‘You see, the passage of the centuries is like a parable
And catches fire on its way.
In the name of its terrible majesty
I shall go freely, through torment, down to the grave.

‘And on the third day I shall rise again.
Life rafts down a river, like a convoy of barges,
The centuries will float to me out of the darkness.
And I shall judge them.’

From Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak translated from the Russian by Max Hayward and Manya Harari. The Harvill Press, London, 1996

The F word - 2

Mata H at Time's Fool is challenging me/us once again. She brought to mind a poem I wrote ten years ago. Goes to show that forgiveness has given me plenty of food for thought over the years. Am I an unforgiving person? I wouldn't have thought so...but, ah, to see one's self as others see one. I think it is a spiritual hurdle just as Mata H points out. We expect so much in the way of forgiveness for ourselves, yet how much do we actually give. Anyway, here's my poetic thoughts on the subject.....

AS I FORGIVE

And forgive us…
As we also have forgiven
Matthew 6:12

Measure for measure..................................
The measure we give
Is the measure we get
How does the balance tip
What is the measure I am forgiven
What is the measure I give

Time for time...................................................
How much? How often?
The going out, the keeping in?
How does the balance tip?
Is seventy times seven more than enough
What more can be asked of us

Mercy for mercy............................................
We live for that imparted to us
But what do we give another?
How does the balance tip?
The hope of mercy given to us
Is the birthright of others too

Weight for weight..........................................
If forgiveness is small
So is our love.
This does the balance show.
For love to grow large,
Forgiveness must grow.
..................................So does the balance show.

© Brigid O’Carroll Walsh 1996

FORGIVENESS: How hard it is....

On my mind since the London Bombing has been the matter of forgiveness.

Each of us needs to know the grace and journey of forgiveness in our lives.

But forgiveness is not an easy thing - especially when there is much to forgive.

The more there is to forgive, the more challenging,

the more time it takes for grace to take its foothold in our hearts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AS I FORGIVE

And forgive us…
As we also have forgiven
Matthew 6:12

Measure for measure
The measure we give
Is the measure we get
How does the balance tip
What is the measure I am forgiven
What is the measure I give

Time for time
How much? How often?
The going out, the keeping in?
How does the balance tip?
Is seventy times seven more than enough
What more can be asked of us

Mercy for mercy
We live for that imparted to us
But what do we give another?
How does the balance tip?
The hope of mercy given to us
Is the birthright of others too

Weight for weight
If forgiveness is small
So is our love.
This does the balance show.
For love to grow large,
Forgiveness must grow.
So does the balance show.

© Brigid O’Carroll Walsh 1996