Friday, December 22
Friday before Christmas
O Antiphon # 6
O Antiphon #6 O Rex Gentium – O King of the Nations
O King of all nations and keystone of the Church:
come and save man, whom you formed from the dust!
Today’s Post: “O King of the Nations”
To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwDdEQCtIF4
Dec 21 shortest daylight = solstice
Posted on December 21, 2016
Thursday, December 21 – O Oriens”
At Detroit’s latitude we will have 9 hours and 3 minutes of daylight, 14 hours and 57 minutes of night time. Our shortest day. Today’s O Antiphon, “O Oriens” (“O Rising Sun”) tells us that the long-ago writers of these sung-blessings for Advent’s last days lived in the northern hemisphere. Deeper & deeper into the days of diminishing light they sing to human longing for liberation and dawn. Tomorrow the day will be 3 minutes longer (I think that’s accurate), the dawn of the majestic march of sunrise back from it’s southern-most point of Oriens.
“O Dayspring
splendour of light and sun of justice:
Come and bring light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.”
These days are full of tenderness, of giving and hospitality, of forgiving old wounds, of allowing someone to forgive and welcome me when our connection had been wounded. Days, too, of longing for the healing of the world’s wounds, days of taking our places in the fatigue and longings of the whole human family.
Daring days of courage. “O Oriens” is quite a prayer.
Have a good day,
john sj
Dec 21 – 5th Antiphon O Oriens – O Dayspring
Today’s Post: “O Dayspring”
To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant
Wednesday December 20
Yesterday, after our weekly senior management meeting, I set out on an Advent ritual I love. I drove down the Ohio Turnpike — pretty ratty construction in 3 places before I settled onto I 80 — to the working class suburb of Pittsburgh, Baden. I will spend some of the days deepest into Advent hanging out with 6 or 7 Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden, soul friends of 40+ years. We will tell each other some stories of the year as it winds down towards the Christian Christmas feast, some of them playful, some tender, some burdened with grief or anger: storytelling as prayer and kinship: a seasonal grace as 2017 turns toward 2018. I’ll savor Ohio’s northern turnpike again on Friday when I head back to Motown and our campus.
Have a blest day, the last before Winter Solstice with its graceful turning in the dimmest light of the year.
john sj
O Antiphon #4 O Clavis David – O Key of David
“O Key of David,
and scepter of the house of Israel,
you open and no one closes,
you close and no one opens
Come and lead us who sit bound with chains in the prison house,
sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.”
To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant
Dec 19 — 3rd Antiphon O Radix Jesse
Posted on December 19, 2014 by
Dec 19 — “Steady your hearts for the Lord is close at hand, and do not grumble one against the other.’ 1 James 5
“Veni ad liberandum nos
Jam noli tardare.”
“Come and liberate us
Come now, don’t delay.”
Today’s Antiphon asks for patience in a demanding, sometimes brutal, world. John Foley’s haunting Advent hymn “Patience People” fits today. In my life experience, it fits many days. On good days I love the patient courage all around me, ordinary people who look and act beautiful and brave. On bad days, I need patient courage to live my commitments, and try to live a pretty elementary decent life. Good days and bad days, the fabric of our lives, no?
The YouTube recording is 3:44 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQVE-5yfq4s
Have a blest Tuesday.
john sj
Today’s Post: “O Root of Jesse”
To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant —> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Z3nwkExUQ
Monday, December 18 – “to ease attention off when overtight”
We are 4 days out from the winter solstice, the shortest day, the sun rising as far south as it gets before turning round to begin its 6 months march of sun rises across the eastern horizon to the summer solstice, the longest day. But that’s for the future. Now is a season to treat the dim light of long nights with respect. Robert Frost writes about dim light as an essential need. Here is his poem, posted to celebrate this time in our year, and this specific day when many of us at the university treat our students to our care about the quality of their intellectual achievements, grading papers time. {Note: when Frost 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, 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.}
Have a great weekend.
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
Sunday December 17 — “It is the 3 strange angels . . . ”
The “O Antiphons” are one of the few song sets from the Breviary of the monastic liturgical hours. They bring holy wisdom to bear on this year’s season of fear and mean spirits to open our imaginations to hope that connects our 2017 with centuries of grace, a reminder that our hard times come to us as part of a vast historical fabric, deeper by far than the labors of the women and men who wrestle with each days news-worthy events. When I follow the news and bring my 2017 awareness into these antiphons, they — their Gregorian Chant and Latin poetry and translations into my own language — my spirit finds a ground in history and beauty and I find that I walk this world with a more upright spine and attentive senses.
May these prayers do something like that for you too.
blessings each of the “O” 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 15
Pope Francis has adopted the practice of visiting with Jesuits who live and work in each country to which he makes a formal visit. Last November 29 he met with 31 Jesuits in Myanmar and, on December 1, with 13 Jesuits in Bangladesh. Here are a few lines.
Post # 1: Francis in Myanmar
Continuing to speak about refugees in the Myanmar meeting, the pontiff recalled meeting a man in a refugee camp during his April 2016 visit to Lesbos. The pope said the man recounted how his wife had been killed before his eyes by terrorists.
“These things must be seen and must be told,” Francis told the Jesuits. “These things do not come to the living rooms of our big cities. We are obliged to report and make public these human tragedies that some try to silence.” (https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/francis-missionary-work-today-includes-opening-europes-closed-hearts-refugees) When he speaks of refugees, Francis reminds me of the Muslim poet Warsan Shire.
Post #2 – Warsan Shire, “Home”
This is the second Warsan Shire poem for the Work Day/Hard Time list. Her words remind me of Isaiah 58, yesterday’s first scripture. As always, it’s best to read the poet out loud, with pauses but I find it a lot harder, than most Work Day posts, to read these words out loud.
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
Warsan Shire
1986
Wednesday December 13
“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 turned me toward William Carlos Williams bringing two starlings into my imagination, alive and dancing. You too, maybe? Short poem and it works best when read slowly and with pauses .
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 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 and a day when W C W says my mood.
Have a blest week.
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
Monday, December 11, 2017
On the McNichols Campus, final exams set the tone of things this week. For more than 1000 years, universities gear up for this time when students bring their A-game and their faculties do as well. Both groups try to get exams right because their efforts go on the public record, a credible statement that “this student has learned how to think at a new level of competence.”
Makes me proud to be here.
In honor of students working to find their voices and their teachers keeping watch and hoping for their success.
Richard Wilbur’s 1921 poem reminds me during exam time to pay attention. Here’s a post from last October—outloud with pauses
Have a blest week.
john sj
ps Our first snow; not a lot, but thrilling to some of us even so. Have a blest week.
Today’s Post: Oct 10 – “The Writer” — Richard Wilbur 1921
Posted on October 10, 2016
Monday, October 10, “young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy”
Fall Break on our campus, which means that administrative people come to work but students and faculty can sleep in — the mid-October Fall Break. Often, the greater your distance in time or space from the work of teaching and research (student research & faculty research and student-faculty research), particularly if you’ve just read another dis-spiriting account of immature student behavior, plus a report on the high cost of higher education, the more likely you might be to mumble some at a 4 day weekend when most of the world is working this Monday morning.
As I ruminated about a poem for this particular Monday, I thought of sheer beauty & brilliant colors; Hopkins’ “Hurrahing in the Harvest” came to mind. Hopkins announces autumn to me each year, but it can wait a week or two until the season has matured some more. But then I remembered why I am thrilled that our McNichols campus, for the second year, now offers this 4 day weekend for students and faculty. I love it partly because October shows more awe within its beauty than any of the seasons (for me. not a universal I know). But mostly because, here on our northwest Detroit campus, this 2 day break honors the fatigue of teaching and learning. The ruminations led me to Richard Wilbur’s unforgettable poem about a parent paying attention to his daughter’s sheer daring, as she writes her way toward an adulthood where strong winds will blow and sometimes even floods . . . writes her way into lifelong courage.
So I’m posting it again, an homage to the quotidian courage of students and their demanding, hopeful, attentive teachers.
Not the peak of autumn yet; most of the leaves outside my window are late-summer, worn-down greens. But there are already traces of frost to promise waves of brilliance on their way. Yes, please read “The Writer” out loud, with pauses.
Note: Wilbur wrote this in 1921, 2 years into the rolling shock waves at the horrors of chemical warfare twisting the faces and limbs of maimed soldiers returning from Europe and, way too often, not finding jobs waiting to honor their broken bodies: a half-decade of fear and rage, of contempt for most immigrants, and for fellow citizens with whom one differed. A year not unlike the years in which we live now. I love it that this poet recognized, in that precise moment of history, the wonder of young human beings risking so much to launch into their futures.
Have a blest day,
john sj
“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 –
About Wilbur’s poems, one reviewer for The Washington Post said, “Throughout his career Wilbur has shown, within the compass of his classicism, enviable variety. His poems describe fountains and fire trucks, grasshoppers and toads, European cities and country pleasures. All of them are easy to read, while being suffused with an astonishing verbal music and a compacted thoughtfulness that invite sustained reflection.” {poets.org}
Wednesday, December 6
“Enough” reminds me of Judith Hill’s “Waging Peace” (posted Dec 2). Habits of beauty and of stillness assume that more than I expect is waiting for me; and waits anywhere. Last full work week of 2013; I am missing December snow, pretty good wind gusts though. Have a blest day.
john st sj
Today’s Post: Enough
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet
p.s. One of the Work Day/Hard Times list readers emailed to tell me that, although frequently ascribed to Mary Oliver, “Wage Peace” is the work of poet and performer Judith Hill (http://www.elise.com/q/poetry/WagePeace.htm). As far as I can tell, Wikipedia is silent about why the poem is often ascribed to Mary Oliver.
Sure enough, it looks like it was not Mary Oliver who wrote “Making Peace,” but Judith Hill.
