{"id":480,"date":"2014-04-14T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T00:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=480"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:51:11","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:51:11","slug":"april-14-the-servant-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2014\/04\/14\/april-14-the-servant-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"April 14 – The Servant of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 14, Monday of Holy Week The Servant Song<\/strong><\/p>\n

Isaiah 42: 1-4<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here is my servant whom I uphold
\nmy chosen one with whom I am pleased
\nUpon whom I have put my spirit;
\nhe shall bring forth justice to the nations,
\nnot crying out, not shouting,
\nno making his voice heard in the street.<\/p>\n

A bruised reed he shall not break,
\nand a smoldering wick he shall not quench
\nuntil he establishes justice on the earth.<\/p>\n

I began learning to teach, a 24 year old kid, at Holy Rosary Mission on Pine Ridge in South Dakota. My life daunted me pretty much every day. So much I didn\u2019t know about teaching, or about Lakota culture, or about the violence of Western culture as it dismembered Lakota culture over a century and a half. One of my jobs in that 7-day-week boarding school was to take care of the K-8 boys from their various bed times until they left the dormitory for school the next morning, c. 110 boys ages 5 to 14 in double and triple deck bunk beds. I took the K-4th graders up an hour before the older boys, got them ready for bed, tended scrapes they had acquired through the day, and told them a story once they were in bed. As they fell asleep, I walked among the bunk beds. I understood that some of these beautiful children would not make it into a durable adulthood; and some would, no knowing which. It broke my heart to see them sleeping in a safe place within an unsafe world. During those nights these 2 lines from Isaiah befriended me.<\/p>\n

A bruised reed he shall not break,
\na smoldering wick he shall not quench<\/p>\n

I began to imagine that The Servant of God about whom Isaiah spoke would not be frightened off by the violence of our world. It\u2019s one reason why I love Joy Harjo\u2019s poem about the coming of spring after a terrible winter in a racist prairie town. I posted \u201cGrace\u201d on September 30 and repeat it today because \u201cGrace” reminds me of The Servant Song.<\/p>\n

This week makes high holy days for me. I imagine the days and their prayers anointing the campus while we do the works to which we are committed: research, teaching, mentoring, ministering to wounded places in our city.<\/p>\n

Have a good week.
\njohn sj<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cGrace\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway<\/p>\n

in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks.<\/p>\n

The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn’t stand it one more time.<\/p>\n

So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us,<\/p>\n

in the epic search for grace.<\/p>\n

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights.<\/p>\n

We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey.<\/p>\n

And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance.<\/p>\n

We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.<\/p>\n

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn’t; the next season was worse.<\/p>\n

You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south.<\/p>\n

And, Wind, I am still crazy.<\/p>\n

I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.<\/p>\n

\"Joy<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Joy Harjo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 14, Monday of Holy Week The Servant Song Isaiah 42: 1-4 Here is my servant whom I uphold my chosen one with whom I am pleased Upon whom I have put my spirit; he shall bring forth justice to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2689,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/2689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}