Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Wednesday,  December 19

Today’s Antiphon, “O Root of Jesse,” grew out of two Biblical texts recounting the genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:23 and Matthew 1:1).  Both versions locate the new born baby as Jesus, a human being, more than as The Christ, the Divine Lord of the all reality.  The human Jesus had ancestors who were heroes and ancestors who were criminals (just like the long stories of ancestors for each reader of this post).  That, I take it, is the teaching embedded in the visual depictions of the “Jesse Tree.”  When teaching courses in the history of U.S. technological practice, I sometimes began a semester inviting students to write one story about one of their ancestors.  I’ve forgotten which student wrote about a long-ago great (great-great?) grandmother who lived with her husband on the then mostly unsettled shore of Big Bay de Noc at the northern edge of Lake Michigan.  He had a habit, it was said, of taking his boat out on Big Bay in the night to visit and have sex with another woman.   The student’s grandmother, one dark night, turned off all the lights so that her unfaithful husband got lost in the dark and, if I remember the story accurately, drowned.

Ancestries, if one traces back far enough, carry the nobility and the venality of human beings.  So too with the tree of Jesse announced in Luke and Matthew to locate the new born Jesus deep within the human condition.

Our university has taken on the stillness of mostly empty parking lots as students and most faculty settling into a time for rest, naps, and kinship times.  I’m getting ready to head out tomorrow afternoon to drive I-80 across northern Ohio to visit kinswomen of 45 years, Sisters of St Joseph who live mostly down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh –  good cooking, even better story telling.   These late Advent posts will keep on coming.

Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s Post:  O Antiphon #3   O Radix Jesse – O Root of Jesse

A 17th-century oak carving of the Tree of Jesse
from St Andrews Castle, Royal Scottish Museum

“O Root of Jesse’s,
Who stands as sign to the peoples
in whose presence rulers close their mouths
to whom the Gentiles send their prayers
come to set us free, hurry.”

To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Z3nwkExUQ

p.s. A note from Wikipedia for more background
Depictions of the Jesse Tree are based on a passage from the Book of Isaiah.
“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots” (King James Version).
In the New Testament the lineage of Jesus is traced by two of the Gospel writers, Matthew in descending order, and Luke in ascending order. Luke’s Gospel’s description in chapter 3 begins with Jesus himself and is traced all the way back, via Nathan to David and then on to “Adam, which was [the son] of God.”. (Luke 3:23-38) Matthew’s Gospel opens with the words: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Matthew 1:1) With this beginning, Matthew shows the Abrahamic and royal descent, passing through David, but then through Solomon

Tuesday, December 18  –  “to ease attention off when overtight”

We are 4 days out from the winter solstice, (http://www.calendarpedia.com/when-is/winter-solstice.html).   But that’s for the future.  Now is a time to treat long nights with respect (today: sunrise 7:56 am – sunset 5:01 pm).   Robert Frost writes about dim light more as an essential need than a grinding burden; when he writes “more divine than any bulb or arc” he refers to arc lights and light bulbs.  Arc lights were the first economically feasible source of electrical power based artificial light.  Immensely bright, they hurt your eyes to look at and so were hard to manage.  Hard to breathe around them too because they gave off what people often called “noxious fumes.”  Back in 1875, though, people thought of them as the march of progress.   R Frost had another idea, as poets often do.

December 18’s sings,  in  “O Antiphon # 2”, of Adonai the Lord and Leader appearing in the fire of the burning bush of Moses in the Sinai.    Today’s wise American poet, Robert Frost, instead, sings praise of the stars and the night.  Best to read the poem out loud,  with pauses.   Today’s early winter sky is going to be alive with brilliant sun.  Enjoy this bath of light and, when it arrives,  may the long night anoint you.

John sj

Today’s Post:   Robert Frost “The Literate Farmers and the Planet Venus”

Here come the stars to character the skies,
And they in the estimation of the wise
Are more divine than any bulb or arc,
Because their purpose is to flash and spark,
But not to take away the precious dark.
We need the interruption of the night
To ease attention off when overtight,
To break our logic in too long a flight,
And ask us if our premises are right

O Antiphon # 2  – “O Adonai”

“O Lord above and ruler of the house of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the flaming bush,
who gave the Law to him on Mt Sinai
Come and save us with your strong arm’s reach.

Today’s Post:  “O Adonai”

To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvafrxZ_Ww4

Robert Frost 1874-1963

Monday December 17  — “It is the 3 strange angels . . . ”

The “O Antiphons” are one of the few song sets from the seven monastic liturgical hours.  Their poetry and song bring Advent wisdom to bear on this  season of fear and meanness; they can open our imaginations out into hope for the wide world.   They remind us that our hard times come to us as only part of a vast historical fabric, that hope runs deeper by far than the weariness of the women and men among whom we live.  When I follow the news and bring my 2018 awareness into the antiphons, they help me walk the world a little taller and with more attentive senses.

May these prayers do something like that for you too.

Blessings for each of the coming seven “O antiphon” days.

john sj

Today’s Post  “the three strange angels”
D. H. Lawrence, of Lady Chatterley fame, wrote poetry as well.

Here is an Advent prayer if there ever was one.

“What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody who wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them.”

Today’s Post  December 17  — “O Sapientia”  

“O wisdom, coming forth from the Most High, filling all creation and reigning to the ends of the earth; come and teach us the way of truth.”

“O Sapientia,  quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter,suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.”

To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6zaiZxJIpU

Friday, December 14
“that’s what got me to face into the wind’s teeth”

I woke this morning with a taste of joy on my tongue, that despite a gaggle of angry news competing for time as we work our commitments.  Sometimes joy after grief awakens slowly, filled with stillness and soft footsteps.  Sometimes joy after grief runs so hard it messes your hair and makes you giddy.  Today’s poem is that 2nd kind of joy.  Whenever I hear what William Carlos Williams has pulled out of his magic poet’s bag; I cannot help repeating it.

Try it for this mid-day in final exam week on McNichols, a poem so short, so improbable,  bringing two starlings into my imagination, alive and dancing.  Maybe he will surprise you too.    Short poems work best when read slowly and with pauses & repeated at least once.

Have a blest weekend at the end of the 2nd Week of Advent.

john sj

Today’s Post:     The Manoeuvre

I saw the two starlings
coming in toward the wires
But at the last,
just before alighting, they

turned in the air together
and landed backwards!
that’s what got me —
to face into the wind’s teeth.

William Carlos Williams
September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

“have a cup of tea and rejoice”

These days of Advent — 4 weeks that dare us to imagine hope without denying violence, loss, and fear. Year by year, they stir my blood and fill me with wonder — work day cars moving women and men in a hurry, their driving more confident in the light traffic. Me? I love the early dark, and the full moon, when the skies clear, hanging over the West side of our campus. Today’s post is partly an homage to a Jesuit soul friend who died too young and partly an homage to a gift he gave me by introducing me to the poet Mary Oliver on one hot summer day in Oglala South Dakota. November 29, was the anniversary of Bill Pauly’s sudden death at 59 of a heart attack while taking a lovely sabbatical after years of demanding pastoring on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation in western South Dakota. Before Pine Ridge, Bill was pastor in a South Milwaukee Latin@ parish. I miss him especially at this time. This Mary Oliver poem captures his earthiness and urgency and his passion for the sacred ordinary.

Advent blessings can open a reader to joy even in a time of mean and frightened ranting. You may have read Mary Oliver here before. Best to read her poetry slowly, with pauses, anticipating surprise.

Welcome to these last days of Term One on our McNichols Campus in Detroit.

john sj

Today’s Post “Wage Peace” (1st posted December 2, 2013)

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown
fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.

Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.

Mary Oliver
September 10, 1935

P.S. Today, December 12, Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, is also celebrated by Sisters of Mercy around the world as Foundation Day. [Foundation Day is the day in which Catherine McAuley and two other sisters took their vows as the first Sisters of Mercy in 1831.]

Monday, December 10, 2018

Over the years on my birthday, Dec 10, 1939; I’ve noticed some dates — one birth – Emily Dickenson in 1830, 3 deaths, and the Nobel Peace Prize award today in Stockholm.

Here are three death anniversaries:

1910 – Red Cloud,   Lakota war leader; until Vietnam I think, the only war leader who formally defeated the U.S. military (signed a treaty of surrender;  later broken alas). Our Jesuit grade and high school on Pine Ridge takes its name from him: “Red Cloud Indian School.”

1968 – Karl Barth,   one of the great Christian theologians of the 20th century  (from my Roman Catholic theological perspective, of the same theological stature as Karl Rahner).

1968 – Thomas Merton,   died while visiting Asia, it seems that he accidentally electrocuted himself while taking a bath: faulty wiring in an electric fan.   Merton has had the greatest influence on me of all these.  Think of his one paragraph prayer as a poem that would reward reading, with pauses, several times.

Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s Post

Thomas Merton “Thoughts in Solitude”

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968

Wednesday  December 7
“. . .  cares for weary companions . . . “

Back home from 3+ days with my sister Midge and her family in Carson City.  Out the window we had some lovely snow + a couple mule deer & several large raptors (I think perhaps a golden eagle).  Here at home we have a lovely dusting of snow and hints of sunshine.

This morning I fished from 2015’s Advent posts and found Nov 30, 2015’s note on Dom Helder Camera, a saint in my book and worth a re-read.  Yes, it is also the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.  Whenever I read this saying, this sacred old man stops me still with his delicacy and his flint-hard courage.

Have a blest weekend.

john sj

Today’s Post – Dom Helder Camera

“It is possible to travel alone, but we know the journey is human life
and life needs company.
Companion is the one who eats the same bread.

The good traveler cares for weary companions, grieves when we lose heart,
takes us where she finds us,  listens to us.
Intelligently, gently, above all lovingly, we encourage each other to go on
and recover our joy
On the  journey.”

February 7, 1909 – August 27, 1999

p.s. Advent often reminds me of one of the saints in my life.  Here’s a meditation about Dom Helder Camera I wrote early in Advent two years ago.

Dom Helder Camera was archbishop of Recife and Olinda from 1964 to 1985 during military dictatorship in Brazil.  He interpreted Catholic teaching with a consistent, fierce attention to the violence of systems maintaining brutal poverty.  He made serious enemies.   It is said that some of them hired a hit man to remove him.  Like the professional he was, the hit man stalked Dom Helder for some time, learning his habits, seeking a place and time apt for killing.   In the process, he listened to him speak a number of times until, one day, he fell at Dom Helder’s feet, weeping, and begged for the grace to change his profession and his life.   When he walked this earth, Dom Helder’s presence engaged the world’s wounds.

This unblinking attention to the violence of poverty was matched by legendary playfulness.  Here is one story among many, this one I witnessed.  Once Dom Helder was speaking to about 1500 people who sat on the St. Louis levee overlooking the Mississippi River (by the Arch); in the middle of the talk, a helicopter took off right behind him filled with tourists taking a ride with a bird’s eye view of the river and the city.   It made enough of a racket that it was impossible to hear what the Dom Helder was saying.  He paused, turned around to the helicopter, and gave the tourists a puckish little wave.  When the helicopter got a little farther out on its trip, he turned back to us.

Monday, December 3, 2018
“.   .   .   .  and wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again”

Some days offer anniversaries of blunt courage and beauty.   The stillness of strong poetry makes a wise response.

Richard Wilbur wrote “The Writer” in 1921,  2 years into the rolling shock waves from WWI’s chemical warfare horrors that twisted the bodies of maimed soldiers returning from Europe.  Way too often, they did not find jobs waiting to honor their broken bodies.  The first half-decade of post war was rough with fear and rage, with sometimes savage contempt for immigrants or for fellow citizens with whom one differed; all these pressures made for hard times, not unlike the years in which we live now.

Richard Wilbur, today’s poet, recognized in that precise moment of history, the sheer beauty and wonder of young people risking a lot while learning to write.  Writing is brave, the poet tells us, especially unfinished writing.

Have a blest week.  I will spend four days with my sister Midge and her family in Carson City Nevada;  back Friday.

john sj

Today’s Post    “The Writer”  Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

     richard wilbur  March 1, 1921  –

p.s.  On this date yesterday, December 2, 1980, four American women, Maura Clark and Ita Ford (Maryknoll sisters), Dorothy Kazel (Ursuline sister), and Jean Donovan a single young woman were raped, murdered, and buried in Salvadoran shallow graves by out-of-uniform Salvadoran soldiers. Their murders evoked a response in the U.S. that galvanized opposition to U.S. funding for the Salvadoran military.  

Brave women.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_murders_of_U.S._missionaries_in_El_Salvador

Friday, November 30   –    the  last day of November

I’m crazy busy today but a GMH can stand by itself and bless anybody.  Who knows what intuition led Hopkins to this metaphor – – a skylark’s wild explosions of energy and what happens when all that free spirit gets caged — skylark caged, a human being caged . . . .  “day-laboring-out life’s age.”  The cage does not define the lark, nor do daily burdens define the person.   Our campus is approaching final exams; lots of hard work and lots of worn down students, faculty, and staff.   This afternoon’s low-in-the-sky sun, pale & delicate can anoint our fatigue.

It helps when reading Hopkins, to give his word play a practice run until you get the cadences right and until you give his word choices a chance to startle your imagination and make you smile.

Welcome to December,

john st sj

Today’s Post:  “The Caged Skylark”

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage

Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—

That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;

This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,

Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,

Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells

Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—

Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,

But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,

But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed

For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

G. M. Hopkins, sj   1844-1889

Wednesday, November 28

How to explain what catches my attention when beginning the day by asking to notice what wants attention just now?   Today’s post surprised me completely. A hint showed up yesterday when a 4” x 6” card fell out of a book I hadn’t opened in a while. This saying of D. H. Lawrence has stopped me in my tracks more often than I can count.  So I took it out of that book and gave it a visible place near my laptop work station.

This morning, I saw it again and followed a hunch about today’s post.   I sought out a file with the label “Poems-Prayers I love.”   Today’s post is the result, a medley of short sayings that have opened my inner attention when I notice them.  I stopped at five.

Best to read them separately, out loud.

Have a blest Wednesday, half way into this work week.

john sj

Today’s Post

What is the knocking

What is the knocking at the door in the night?

It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no.  It is the three strange angels.

Admit them, admit them.

D.H. Lawrence: “Song of the Man Who Has Come Through”

******     ******

I stand for the heart.

To the dogs with the head!

I had rather be a fool with a heart

Than Jupiter Olympus with his head.

The reason the mass of men fear God and at bottom dislike Him,

is because they rather distrust His heart

and fancy Him all brain

like a watch.

Melville to Hawthorne 1851

******     ******

It is possible to travel alone, but we know the journey is human life and life needs company.
Companion is the one who eats the same bread.

The good traveler cares for weary companions,
grieves when we lose heart,
takes us where he finds us,
listens to us.
Intelligently, gently, above all, lovingly,
we encourage each other to go on
and recover our joy on the journey.

Dom Helder Camera

******     ******

It should be noted that in the Society (of Jesus)

There are different kinds of houses or dwellings.

These are: the house of probation,

the college, the professed house,

and the journey

and by this last the whole world becomes our house.

Ieronimal Nadal, S.J.  1554

******     ******

Sedulo curavi humanas actiones

non ridere non lugere neque detestari,

sed intellegere.

I have laboured carefully,

when faced with human actions,

not to mock, not to lament, nor to execrate,

but to understand.

Spinoza  Tractatus Politicus

******     ******

Same picture of the sun low in the western sky – last Tuesday,  November 20