Category: Poetry

Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Eastertide, Eternal Life, Faith, Holy Spirit, Poetry, Prayer, PsalmsLeave a comment

May 21, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 103 which, set between our two readings, reminds us that the Ascension has occurred and that:

The Lord has established a throne in heaven.

Therefore, we are in a New Creation and thus invoke one of the most beautiful Creation psalms. 

Psalm 103 invites us to stand at the edge of First Creation as it breathes in the spirit of God. With the angels and all the intricate works of the Lord, we inhale Divinity. We quicken with the “ruach” of God, (Hebrew for “breath”.)

What we read in our translations of the Bible as “spirit”, “wind” or “breath” are translated from one Hebrew word, ruach. Walter Brueggemann says; “The Bible struggles to find adequate vocabulary to speak about and name this unutterable, irresistible, undomesticated force that surges into history to liberate, heal, remake, and transform. We are left with this code term, ruach, to speak about what we know but cannot say.” Ruach is the wind that parted the waters and created dry land, it is the very breath that God breathed into humans in our creation, it was this spirit that parted the seas and allowed the people to escape from slavery in Egypt, it is the same spirit that Jesus claims and empowers the early church in Acts. This ruach is active throughout our sacred stories.

from Caroline Furnace Retreat Center
Caroline Furnace Retreat Center Webpage

As we approach the feast of the great Inspiration of the Spirit, let us bless and praise our God for outpouring every form of infinite life upon us. May our humble prayer make room in us for ever deeper grace.

With all Creation, let us prepare our hearts to welcome the illuminating fire of the Spirit’s gifts and fruits to be renewed in us this Pentecost:

Bless the Lord, you angels,
you mighty ones who do the bidding of God,
and hearken to the voice of the word of the Lord.
 
Bless the Lord, all you hosts,
you ministers who do the will of God.

Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord, 
in all places of the dominion of the Lord;
bless the Lord, O my soul.

Psalm 103: 20-22

Poetry: Breathe on me, Breath of God – Edwin Hatch (1835-1889)

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what Thou dost love,
And do what Thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with Thee I will one will,
To do and to endure.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Blend all my soul with Thine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with Thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
So shall I never die,
But live with Thee the perfect life
Of Thine eternity.

Music: Breath of God – Caroline Cobb

Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Poetry, Prayer, PsalmsLeave a comment

May 20, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 16, one of my very favorite psalms.

I like to pray with this transliteration by Steven Mitchell – A Book of Psalms

Unnamable God,
I feel you with me at every moment.
You are my food, my drink,
my sunlight, and the air I breathe.
You are the ground I have built on
and the beauty that rejoices my heart. 
I give thanks to you at all times
for lifting me from my confusion,
for teaching me in the dark
and showing me the path of life. 
I have come to the center of the universe;
I rest in your perfect love.
In your presence there is fullness of joy
and blessedness forever and ever.

The psalmist’s prayer is so beautiful that I will just leave it without my interpretations today. Instead, here are a few settings – poetry and music – to lift this gem of a psalm before your prayer.

Let each phrase rest in your spirit.
Breathe with its rhythm.
As you savor it, let it release
a precious and holy truth
into your life.

Poetry: Two of my poems, both written when I was very young in my spiritual journey.

Awaking

Sunrise paints 
the hedge’s morning side
rose-petal gold.

But I choose
the western side.
There, midnight’s purple leaves

awake in lazy grey, 
then stripes
of green and silver.

There, the awesome 
grace of living
rises slowly in the heart,

a liquor savored,
a prayer lingering
in genuflected silence.

Contemplation

It happened in that distant winter, deep
in pristine mornings like Venetian glass.
Everyday I’d turn to face You
as frozen orange sun
slid up a whitening sky.

Every day, You would be silent,
until finally You folded me
in silence, like a nestling child
comes quiet in the rhythm
of its mother’s breath.

Even now, on such a morning
I remember how it was
when first I came to love You
from the inside, out
– the way the leaves love green.

Music: Two pieces today:

1-The Fullness of Joy – Shane and Shane

2-Hymn to Hope from Sacred Garden

Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Hope, peace, Poetry, Prayer, PsalmsLeave a comment

May 19, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 68, some different verses for this second day:

Show forth, O God, your power,
    the power, O God, with which you took our part;
For your temple in Jerusalem
    let the kings bring you gifts.
You kingdoms of the earth, sing to God,
    chant praise to the Lord
    who rides on the heights of the ancient heavens.
Behold, God’s voice resounds, the voice of power:
    “Confess the power of God!”

Psalm 68 is a prayer that gives full voice to Israel’s gratitude for being God’s chosen people. And in that way, it is a challenging psalm to pray with today as modern Israel and Palestine descend into all out war which disproportionately affects the poor, elderly, women and children.

The contradiction of our psalm, placed against this war scenario, is deeply unsettling. Does God really want the nation of Israel to dominate a geography to the annihilation of other peoples?

What I remind myself of this morning is this: biblical Israel is not the same as the political state of Israel. After WWII, the political state was initiated as part of a partition plan in which both Palestine and Israel would be independent states. The plan didn’t work out, creating multiple ensuing conflicts. The current one is just the latest edition.

Biblical Israel, on the other hand, is not a physical territory but instead a relationship – the foundational heritage of all Abrahamic faiths. For Christians it is a heritage that led to our faith in Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Although once rooted in a geography, that faith is now rooted in a universal love which reverences life for all people, particularly the poor, the orphaned, and the disenfranchised.

As I pray Psalm 68 today, I pray it with a woman named Arlette in my mind and heart. My friend Eileen McGovern introduced me to her friend, who wishes not to be named, with the following story. As we pray today, let this woman and all who suffer in war be with us.

I write for a friend who is voiceless. She lives in Bethlehem, Palestine.

I met her during a pilgrimage in October 2019, and we became friends. We have kept in touch and have grown to know and to respect one another. She is teaching me Arabic phrases. I am not a good student so we both laugh at my efforts. Or, we used to until the recent outbreak of violence.

She was born in 1948 when Palestine was a French protectorate. French is her first language, one of four. Yet she is voiceless. Who will hear her?

As a young school girl she pledged allegiance to the French flag and sang La Marseillaise when her home was a French protectorate. When Transjordan was created, as a teenager she sang the Jordanian anthem as she struggled to learn Arabic. At age 40 she became a Palestinian with the creation of the Israeli and Palestine states. She still lives in the West Bank. She has not moved, but politics again have upended her life.

She loves children. Before the Covid-19 pandemic she volunteered at a school for deaf children. At Christmas she runs a charity to give poor Christian children a gift card and food so that their families can celebrate the feast with the traditional chicken dinner, a luxury they cannot afford. During the previous intifada she used to gather Palestinian children into her home and give them chocolates and tell them stories so they would not throw stones at Israeli soldiers.

She is a woman of peace who has seen too much war. She is haunted by the memory of looking out her window to see a man standing outside her house disappear in a phosphorescent flash. This morning she told me of watching TV and seeing men desperately digging, some with their bare hands, in the rubble of a Palestinian home where the cries of an infant girl could be heard. The men did not have heavy equipment so I do not know if they were able to save her.

Now she asks: “Who am I? The Israelis do not want us here. They want me to leave the home of my birth, but I am a devout Christian who loves this land, a sacred land, the Holy Land, the land of Jesus’ birth. I do not want to leave, and where would I go? Who wants Palestinians? No one wants us. I want only to live in peace and to see people of all faiths be able to come to Jerusalem without fear. I live in fear, especially for my son who can be taken from me at any time by Israeli police. I pray, but I am afraid to hope again.”

Music: Desert – Rasha Nahas is a Palestinian artist. Below is her song “Desert” which I find both profound and disturbing. It can be interpreted as a personification poem describing the experience of the Palestinian people in the story of a single individual.

Here is a link to learn more about Rasha from America magazine:

An article about Rasha Nahas from America Magazine

Please just take it all away
I am nobody I could name
My self
I float upon
Pearls some songs
They’ve been buried for years

My self
I’m a desert torn
I was born on the mountain by the sea
The west rapes east
My west disease
I’m a little beast
Hiding up the street
In a little room
With a little bed
On the dusty floor
Lies human flesh

Time melts out my eyes
As my heart is bleeding quarter tones
and I sail on this song

The dead sea
used to be alive
She had a woman and a child
And she couldn’t live at home she said
She wandered lost
and she wandered west
to the place where the bible spoke of gods
All their temples and their floods
They hung her on a cross
She is a language no one dares to talk
Sweet bleeding palms and the breeze of death
They buried her
She’s a roaring breath

Time melts out her eyes
As her heart is bleeding
Quarter tones and she sails on this song

Sweet bleeding palms
And the cheering men
They buried me
I am a roaring breath

Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eastertide, Faith, Jesus, Poetry, Prayer, PsalmsLeave a comment

May 18, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 68 which captures a solemn yet glorious theme running through today’s readings: in God’s time, things end and new things emerge.

A bountiful rain you showered down, O God, upon your inheritance;
    you restored the land when it languished;
Your flock settled in it;
    in your goodness, O God, you provided it for the needy.

Psalm 68: 10-11

This eternal dynamism of life-death-life is wrapped in multi-colored spools around the emotions of our lives. We can hear Paul negotiating his ebbing joys and sorrows in our first reading.

In Acts, Paul is facing his physical diminishment and impending death. Like others throughout all of time, he is retelling his life story, motivations, and achievements so that their significance may be stamped on the hearts of those he will leave behind. In all things, Paul gives the glory to God:

Yet I consider life of no importance to me,
if only I may finish my course
and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus,
to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s grace.

Acts 20:24

In our Gospel, Jesus is giving a similar summary and farewell. He prays aloud to the Father so that his disciples may be instructed by hearing his final prayer:

I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
because the words you gave to me I have given to them,
and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you,
and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.

John 17: 6-9

Both Paul and Jesus have brought the “abundant rain” of Psalm 68 to their ministries. But now it is time for others to carry on the work:

God is a saving God for us;
    the LORD, my Lord, controls 
the passageways of life and death. 

Psalm 68:21

As the tides of God’s eternity rise and ebb through our lives, we too at times must hand over and/or receive that eternal heritage of grace. May we exercise these rituals with the greatest of reverence and awareness.

Blessed be the Lord day by day,
God, our salvation, who carries us.
Our God is a God who saves;
deliverance from death to life 
belongs to God.

Psalm 68: 20-21

Like Jesus and Paul, may we open our stories in faith and love to the community that surrounds us. Especially as we mature both in years and experience, may we share our truth with grace and the gift of encouragement to others. And may those younger ministers take up new responsibilities with reverence, joy, and trust.

Poetry: When Someone Goes Away – Nikola Madzirov

In the embrace on the corner you will recognize 
someone’s going away somewhere. It’s always so. 
I live between two truths 
like a neon light trembling in 
an empty hall. My heart collects 
more and more people, since they’re not here anymore. 
It’s always so. One fourth of our waking hours 
is spent in blinking. We forget 
things even before we lose them – 
the calligraphy notebook, for instance.
Nothing’s ever new. The bus 
seat is always warm. 
Last words are carried over 
like oblique buckets to an ordinary summer fire. 
The same will happen all over again tomorrow— 
the face, before it vanishes from the photo, 
will lose the wrinkles. When someone goes away 
everything that’s been done comes back.

Music: Music by Giovanni Marradi – several hours of beautiful music. You may wish to listen for awhile.

Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eastertide, Faith, peace, Poetry, Prayer, PsalmsLeave a comment

May 17, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 68, an assertive call for God to show up and do something about evil in the world:

Arise, O God, and let your enemies be scattered;
let those who hate you flee.
Let them vanish like smoke when the wind drives it away; 
as the wax melts at the fire,
so let the wicked perish at your presence.
But let the righteous be glad and rejoice before you;
let them also be merry and joyful.

Psalm 68: 1-3

Haven’t we said a similar prayer many times in our lives? Doesn’t it rise up in us now as we watch war erupt in the Middle East, as we see India overwhelmed by COVID 19?

Don’t we want God to just fix things!

But the psalm itself reveals the only way healing and peace come into the world – it is through the triumph of justice in each of our hearts. Ultimately, God has made us the means to peace:

But the just rejoice and exult before God;
    they are glad and rejoice.
Sing to God, chant praise to his name
    whose name is the LORD. 

Psalm 68: 4-5

The psalmist prays for communal wholeness by describing God’s active Mercy:

Protector of orphans, defender of widows,
the One who dwells in holiness,
who gives the solitary a home
and brings forth prisoners into freedom.

Psalm 68: 6-7

But God can only touch the suffering through our hands, prayers, and actions of justice. When we allow God to do that, then we can rejoice.

Sing to God, O dominions of the earth;
sing praises to the Lord.
You ride in the heavens, the ancient heavens, O God;
sending forth your voice, your mighty voice into our spirits

Psalm 68: 32-33

Poetry: Come to Dust – Ursula LeGuin

Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.
Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring’s green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.
                                   All earth’s dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.

Music: Let There Be Peace – Vince Gill

Sorry, it’s the non-inclusive version, but the pictures are so pretty😇

Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Eastertide, Faith, Holy Spirit, Love, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms1 Comment

May 12, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 148, one of the “Laudate Psalms”.

The Laudate Psalms are the psalms numbered 148, 149, and 150, traditionally sung all together as one psalm in the canonical hours, most particularly the hour of Lauds, also called “Morning Prayer”, which derives its name from these psalms.

from Wikipedia

I’ve always loved the morning with its radiant possibility spilling over the horizon. Morning comes like a rainbow pantone, speaking not only to the weather outside but within our own spirits.

Praise the name of the LORD,
    for this name alone is exalted;
The Lord’s majesty is above earth and heaven.

Psalm 148: 13

Waking each morning, I wait for the day to speak to me. It finds itself in the sun or clouds, the warmth or cold. And then it finds me in whatever weather my heart might rest.

Prayer begins after that discovery, inviting the transforming and comforting power of God into whatever the day offers. Essentially, it is always a prayer of thanksgiving that I am alive and given another day to, by the power of God’s grace, know and be Love in the world:

Praise the LORD from the heavens;
    praise God in the heights.
Praise God, all you angels;
    praise God, all you hosts.

Psalm 138: 1-2

As we wait for the Holy Spirit on the great feast of Pentecost, let us trust Jesus’s Gospel words in today’s Gospel. Let us find each morning, and each day, full of promise!

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when the Spirit comes, the Spirit of truth,
you will be guided to all truth.

John 16:12-13

Poetry: Morning Poem – Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches–
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging–

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Music- Morning Has Broken – Cat Stevens

Sixth Sunday of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Eastertide, Faith, Gospel, inclusivity, Poetry, Psalms3 Comments

May 9, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 98, an exuberant celebration of God’s predilection and fidelity toward Israel. But at the same time, it is a call to recognize God’s love for ALL Creation:

The LORD has made his victory known;
has revealed his triumph in the sight of the nations

Psalm 98;2

If we read the whole psalm, we might imagine all Creation assembled like a magnificent choir and orchestra – something like a supersized Mormon Tabernacle Choir. As the psalm progresses, the choirmaster-psalmist incorporates successive components into an awakened awareness until there is one universal melody of praise.

First, in a theme we met recently, the call to a NEW song:

Sing a new song to the LORD,
who has done marvelous deeds…
..remembering mercy and faithfulness
toward the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God.

Psalm 98: 1-3

Next, the vocals and the instruments 

Shout with joy to the LORD, all the earth;
break into song; sing praise.
Sing praise to the LORD with the lyre,
with the lyre and melodious song.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
shout with joy to the King, the LORD.

Psalm 98: 4-6

Then nature’s  “orchestra”

Let the sea and what fills it resound, the world and all who dwell in it!

And even the suggestion of tambourine dancers along the river’s edge

Let the rivers clap their hands
the mountains shout with them for joy,
before the LORD who comes,
who comes to govern the earth,
To govern the world with justice
and the peoples with fairness.

Psalm 98: 8-9

This inclusive psalm serves our other readings so well. The early Church in Acts has folded the Gentiles into the chorus.

Then Peter proceeded to speak and said,
“In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.
Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly
is acceptable to him.”

Acts 10: 34-35

And Jesus gives us the underlying truth that, in his Love, we are ALL part of this cosmic symphony:

“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.

This is my commandment:
love one another as I love you.

Poetry: Shoulders – Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.
We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

Music: OK – it’s not the Mormon Tabernacle 😀 but it captures the spirit for me! I hope it puts you in the rhythm too, beloveds!

Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eastertide, Faith, Jesus, joy, Poetry, Prayer, PsalmsLeave a comment

May 8, 2021

“Joy is God in the marrow of our bones.” (Eugenia Price)
Joy is a deep well.
If, in times of sorrow, we go down under the sorrow,
we will discover that joy is still alive.

from Seven Sacred Pauses by Macrina Wiederkehr
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 100, considered by some to be the most revered and important of all the psalms. Walter Brueggemann says this:

This psalm is one of the best known and best loved in the entire repertoire of the Psalter.
It breathes a faith of simple trust, glad surrender, and faithful responsiveness.
It is not sung by newcomers who are only now embracing the faith but by those who are seasoned and at home in this faith and piety.

Psalm 100 is a prayer of pure, complete and confident joy in God. What a great way to live our lives!

Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;
    serve the LORD with gladness;
    come before him with joyful song.

Psalm 100: 1-2

This is the kind of joy experienced by the early Church in Acts:

Day after day the churches grew stronger in faith
and increased in number.

Acts 16:5

It is the joy which makes us impervious to hate, as Jesus describes in the Gospel:

Jesus said to his disciples: 
“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.
If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own;
but because you do not belong to the world,
and I have chosen you out of the world,
the world hates you.

John 15: 18-19

Here is a line I love:

Don’t let the devil steal your JOY!

I first saw it from Pat Livingston, a wonderful speaker and writer on spirituality. But its roots are in John 16:22 as Jesus bids farewell to the disciples:

Now is your time of grief,
but I will see you again and you will rejoice,
and no one will take away your joy.

Let us look at Jesus in our prayer today,
and let him look deeply into us.
May that prayer give us immense joy!

Poetry: Happiness Is Harder

To read a book of poetry 
from back to front, 
there is the cure for certain kinds of sadness.
A person has only to choose. 
What doesn’t matter; just that—
This coffee. That dress. 
“Here is the time I would like to arrive.” 
“Today, I will wash the windows.”
Happiness is harder.
Consider the masters’ description 
of awakened existence, how seemingly simple: 
Hungry, I eat; sleepy, I sleep. Is this choosing completely, 
or not at all?

Music: Jubilate Deo – Mozart

Jubilate Deo omnis terra; servite Domino in lætitia.
Introite in conspectu ejus in exsultatione.
Scitote quoniam Dominus ipse est Deus; ipse fecit nos, et non ipsi nos.
Populus ejus, et oves pascuæ ejus, introite portas ejus in confessione;
atria ejus in hymnis, confitemini illi.
Laudate nomen ejus, quoniam suavis est Dominus;
in æternum misericordia ejus;
et usque in generationem et generationem veritas ejus.

Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eastertide, Faith, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms2 Comments

May 7, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 57, a prayer of fervent praise to our awesome God.

Photo credit: Neil Rosenstech @neilrst

The act of prayerful praise can be hard to understand . The concept of human praise can get in our way. 

Prayerful praise in not flattery, or compliments, or the giving of deserved admiration to a distant God. Rather, as Psalm 57 shows us, it is an outpouring of reverent gratitude before Unimaginable Love.

Be exalted above the heavens, O God;
    above all the earth be your glory!

Psalm 57:12

Such a prayer rises
from our heart’s awestruck silence
not only to be in the Presence of,
but to be loved by
such Divine Wonder.

We may not be able to stand before a majestic mountain today to image God’s magnificence as we pray. But we can bow our hearts before the abundant evidence of God’s love for us. God created us and holds us in love with every breath we take.

Today, we may simply want to breathe our praise.

Poetry:Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Music: Be Exalted – John Michael Talbot

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eastertide, Faith, Jesus, joy, Poetry, Prayer, PsalmsLeave a comment

May 6, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 96, a song which dances with jubilation. It filled my prayer with images and music. No worded reflection … no Vatican documents. Just let the exuberant scriptures uplift you today.

That’s what I share with you today, beloveds❤️

Sing to the Lord! Toss away any old dirge trying to weigh your spirit down!

And sing anew because Jesus has given us this infinite gift.

Poetry: I Call You Beloved – Rabindranath Tagore

When You command me to sing, 
it seems that my heart would break with pride, 
and I look to your face, and tears come to my eyes.
All that is harsh and dissonant in my life 
melts into one sweet harmony—
and my adoration spreads wings 
like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.
I know You take pleasure in my singing. 
I know that only as a singer 
I come before your presence.
I touch, by the edge of the far-spreading wing of my song, 
Your feet, which I could never aspire to reach.
Drunk with the joy of singing, 
I forget myself and call you Beloved, who are my Lord.

Music: Two songs, one classical, one a little devilment, but I couldn’t help singing it.🤗

  1. For beauty: A New Song by James MacMillan

  1. For fun: Joy to the World – Three Dog Night