Wednesday of the First Week of Lent

February 24, 2021

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 51. The psalm is accompanied by readings so rich in sacred symbolism that just an isolated word or image, focused on and repeated, can be a source of deep prayer.

As we pray Psalm 51, we might think of Jonah. How like him we can be – ignoring God’s nudges until we are thrown into some whale’s belly of trouble! There – tossed, turned, shaken up, and thoroughly washed – we might come out with a new perspective on our lives, just a Jonah did. 🐳😊

Let’s still our spirits in any tumbling water we might find ourselves as we pray today. What is it that God might be nudging us to right now in our lives? What circumstance might we place in the waters to be thoroughly cleaned so that we may see it anew?

Poetry: Leviathan by Clare Pollard

1 Sometimes I feel like Jonah
fleeing Nineveh.
Who wants to hear what is evil?
Every day we make this earth less
alive, various or legal.
What is this diminishment
but sin against god
which is a program
to generate complexity?
I should go to Nineveh
and cry against wickedness
which halts love
which wants
the other’s different self
to stay itself.

2 They say if you’re fair
or moneyed
or live on a mountain
you won the lottery,
everyone else, apologies — 
storms aren’t going away
so play the game nicely.
Lots are cast, blame allotted,
men tossed to the ocean’s
torsion, seaweed’s cage,
foreclosing
depths and then the blue whale’s
curdled belly
digesting
everything we’ve done.

3 I visited a branch of Sea Life
in an ex-county hall.
Mops in corridors, half-empty
vending machines.
They took photos of us
pretending to look scared
in front of green screens.
Rays took tidbits
from stinking cups.
The sharks were
gilled glide,
ravenous for outside.
We were dumped onto dry land
by the Coca-Cola
London Eye.

4 I must warn Nineveh.
But who wants to hear me say
what is evil?
It is dominion.
It is the law
that makes goodness impossible,
fasting in sackcloth
the only option.
But God will not say must
only relent or sorrow
as the whale does
when her calf is taken — 
a harrowed sound
that does not bear
description.

Music: Wash Me Clean – Maggie Dawn

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 
Percy Bysshe Shelley
 
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
      Floats though unseen among us; visiting
      This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piney mountain shower,
           It visits with inconstant glance
           Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
           Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
           Like memory of music fled,
           Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.


Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
      With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
      Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
           Ask why the sunlight not for ever
           Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
           Why fear and dream and death and birth
           Cast on the daylight of this earth
           Such gloom, why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?


No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
      To sage or poet these responses given:
      Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavor:
Frail spells whose utter'd charm might not avail to sever,
           From all we hear and all we see,
           Doubt, chance and mutability.
Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven,
           Or music by the night-wind sent
           Through strings of some still instrument,
           Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.


Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
      And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
      Man were immortal and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
           Thou messenger of sympathies,
           That wax and wane in lovers' eyes;
Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,
           Like darkness to a dying flame!
           Depart not as thy shadow came,
           Depart not--lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.


While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
      Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
      And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
           I was not heard; I saw them not;
           When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
           All vital things that wake to bring
           News of birds and blossoming,
           Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
  I shriek'd, and clasp'd my hands in ecstasy!


I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
      To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
      With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
           Of studious zeal or love's delight
           Outwatch'd with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illum'd my brow
           Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free
           This world from its dark slavery,
           That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.


The day becomes more solemn and serene
      When noon is past; there is a harmony
      In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
           Thus let thy power, which like the truth
           Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
           Its calm, to one who worships thee,
           And every form containing thee,
           Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

If you enjoy art and the Romantic poets, you might like this lovely site I discovered today. Make sure to click on “Grass bed” under “Portfolio” in the menu. Enjoy!