Tag: Mary Oliver

Blessed Retrospect!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, Forgiveness, spiritualityLeave a comment

Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 13, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071323.cfm

Joseph Forgives His Brothers – Joseph Von Cornelius

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Joseph forgives his brothers and Jesus commissions his disciples.

The story of Joseph’s forgiveness makes a tender and indelible mark on the prayerful reader. How we wish we could be as magnanimous as Joseph in our forbearance!

Joseph’s experience is one of a long-held hurt that he sets aside to pursue another life. But even though he achieves tremendous success in his new environment, hurts like this are never forgotten. Joseph’s sobs at verse four indicate the painful memory’s depth.

Joseph could no longer control himself
in the presence of all his attendants,
so he cried out, “Have everyone withdraw from me!”
Thus no one else was about when he made himself known to his brothers.
But his sobs were so loud that the Egyptians heard him,
and so the news reached Pharaoh’s palace.
“I am Joseph,” he said to his brothers.
“Is my father still in good health?”
But his brothers could give him no answer,
so dumbfounded were they at him.

Genesis 45:1-3

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free
and discover that the prisoner was you.”

Lewis B. Smedes

So many lessons can be drawn from this passage, but clearly the power of forgiveness is most evident. Joseph has been able to live a fruitful life in Egypt because he has already forgiven his brothers’ treachery, long before they unexpectedly arrive at his palace doorstep. He has chosen not to live under the burden of their treacherous choice.

In the wider perspective of God’s timing, we see that the treachery actually yielded a blessing not only for Joseph, but for all of Israel. We ask for the grace to see how our own need to give and receive forgiveness holds a larger blessing for our lives.

Poetry: Let It Go – e.e.cummings

Let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go
 
let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go
 
let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
 
so comes love

Music: Remember Not the Things of the Past – Bob Hurd

Remember not the things of the past;
now I do something new,
do you not see it?
Now I do something new, says the Lord.
 
In our distress God has grasped us by the hand,
opened a path in the sea, and we shall pass over,
we shall pass over, free at last.
 
In our parched land of hypocrisy and hate,
God makes a river spring forth,
a river of mercy, truth and compassion;
come and drink.
 
And who among us is sinless in God’s sight?
Then who will cast the first stone,
when he who was sinless
carried our failings to the cross?
 
Pressing ahead, letting go what lies behind,
may we be found in the Lord, and sharing his dying,
share in his rising from the dead.

Undimmable Light

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Advent, Eternal Life, Faith, healing, Hope, spiritualityLeave a comment

Friday of the Second Week of Advent
December 9, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120922.cfm

(Today, I am re-publishing an earlier blog. I used it for my own prayer this morning and I thought it really deserved another read. I hope you agree.)

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 1 and its confident responsorial verse.

Last night we watched a public television Christmas special, “Rick Steves’s European Christmas“. From its many beautiful scenes, one in particular remained with me: a little group of friends tobogganing down a snow covered hill at night. Their only lights came from the small lanterns they held and the full moon’s generous luster against the white snow.

My first reaction to the scene was to wonder, “What if their light goes out?”. Then I realized that there was a light beyond them which would guide their way.

There are times in our lives when the light, if it doesn’t go out, at least flickers. I wrote about that awareness in this story a few years ago: 

She had arranged to visit with an old college friend. They had been separated too long by the distancing choices that life often demands. She wanted to reconnect to that rare experience of shared transparency found just once or twice in a lifetime – the gift of a real friend.

They sat on a porch overlooking a gentle pond. The day was bright, the coffee hot, the chairs comfortable. But the magic was gone.  Only half her friend had arrived for the cherished conversation. The other half – joy, adventure and the excess of youthful hope – had been lost. Somewhere in the intervening years, the light had gone out. Her friend had suffered a wound she did not share. This one afternoon would be too short a time to give that wound a name.

During our Advent journey, God is waiting in the seeming darkness to guide us. God already knows the wounds we carry. God sees where our heart’s light has dimmed. Holding our half-heartedness next to the Divine Heart, God yearns to rekindle us.

Today’s psalm reminds us that there is a always Light waiting beyond us to guide our way.

Blessed the one follows not
the counsel of darkness
nor walks in it ways,
nor remains in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on its Light day and night.

Psalm 1:1-2

Poetry: from Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Music: Christ, Be Our Light – Bernadette Farrell

Time Passes

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
November 21, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112122.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our first reading from Revelation describes what has come to be known in modern culture as “the Rapture”. It’s a concept probably more popularized by modern fiction than by our devotion to scripture.

Rev 4_1 rapture

Maybe you are one of the  60 million readers of the “Left Behind” books by Jenkins and LaHaye. This popular series captures our fascination with “the end times”. 

The writer of Revelation is doing the same thing. This highly imaginative ancient author – adept at symbols, allegory, and poetry – writes to awake and engage us in our own salvation.

Whether or not his visions predict facts is not the point. The point is that there will come an end time to every life. When it comes to us, we want to have already become God’s familiar and beloved friend.

A second point is that this world, as we know it, is passing. We should not make our heart’s investment here. Our lasting treasure lies in God’s realm which, while present here, is often rendered invisible by our human hungers and distractions.

Revelation enjoins us to wake up, see beyond the visible, and live a life worthy of eternity. 

How? The true and simple answer is in today’s Gospel:

“When Jesus looked up he saw some wealthy people
putting their offerings into the treasure
and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins.
He said, “I tell you truly,
this poor widow put in more than all the rest;
for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth,
but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.”

This blessed widow, even in her impoverished circumstances, understood where her true treasure lay. She was already counted among the sainted  “hundred and forty-four thousand”.

Poetry: The Rapture – Mary Oliver

All summer
I wandered the fields
that were thickening 
every morning, 
every rainfall, 
with weeds and blossoms, 
with the long loops
of the shimmering, and the extravagant-
pale as flames they rose
and fell back, 
replete and beautiful-
that was all there was-
and I too
once or twice, at least, 
felt myself rising, 
my boots
touching suddenly the tops of the weeds, 
the blue and silky air-
listen, 
passion did it, 
called me forth, 
addled me, 
stripped me clean
then covered me with the cloth of happiness-
I think there is no other prize, 
only rapture the gleaming, 
rapture the illogical the weightless-
whether it be for the perfect shapeliness
of something you love-
like an old German song-
or of someone-
or the dark floss of the earth itself, 
heavy and electric.
At the edge of sweet sanity open 
such wild, blind wings. 

Music: When I read these apocalyptic passages, I like to imagine the scene by listening to compatible music. One of my favorite accompaniments is Richard Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries. Just imagine Jesus riding into our lives on these exalted melodies!