35.Can clay say to potter, Why did you make methis way?Clay traitor greets potter with faithless kiss. 36.Soldiers kick up dust beneath urgent angry feet.Creatorof stars and soil is still. Dust covers Him. 37.Before they flee do His shame-faced friends recallbrieflypalm fronds, dusty road, humble king on donkey? 38.My feet, like theirs, carry the fallenContinue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Final Week”
Category Archives: Lent
Microprayers for Lent: Week 6
28.(But can You make my wilful will as soft, aswilling to change at Your touch as this clay?) 29.Some days I could see You transfiguredand barelynotice. Transfix my eyes. Show me truth. 30.First, this truth: You became clay, became dust.The potterbecame like the fragile clay He made. 31.The same hands that sculpted soil into lifenowContinue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Week 6”
Microprayers for Lent: Weeks Four and Five
17.When did clay first think to shirk the potter?As lungsfirst billowed with breath, sun barely risen? 18.I was not there at first dawn yet I too wake withthe sameserpentine thought in my drowsy brain. 19.Great mystery: that clay should breathe and defy.Greater this:that dried up clay should breathe again. 20.When it breathes, what does theContinue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Weeks Four and Five”
Microprayers for Lent: Week Three
11.Only You with the gentle wind of Your fingerscan sweepthese layers without losing me. 12.Your wind it was that first animated dust –so nowcatch me up in the willy-willy of You. 13.Scoop me, spiral me in the eye of Your storm;swirl meup in Your whirlwind. Enspirit me. 14.For only in the dance and condensation ofYourContinue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Week Three”
Microprayers for Lent: Week 2
5.Dust clogs the corridors of heart’s chambers.Have mercy:teach love to this dust. 6.Clean airways. Clean neural pathways. Clean roadsto love.Breathe clean air in me. 7.Wipe clean eyes overclouded with dust.Give sightto know my earthen flesh in others. 8.(And what of the dust on the countertop and shelves,the haze in my line of sight to You?)Continue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Week 2”
Microprayers: First Week
What is this quintessence of dust? William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.Ashen brain breathes ashen prayers.My God –can ashes rise? 2.Dust clings to prayer’s mouth.I breathe;Prayer disperses… 3.Dust too collects in glory’s crevices;I longfor life, not death. 4.Water me with the condensation ofYour Spirit.Make me mud to mould.
40 Days of Mercy Week 6: Mercy at the Cross
As we move closer to the time of remembering Jesus’ death, this week’s poem comes from Ukrainian-born poet Anna Akhmatova, whose poem sequence “Requiem” explores the grief that she and others witnessed of the height of Stalinist rule. One striking image that Akhmatova returns to continually throughout the sequence is that of a mother mourningContinue reading “40 Days of Mercy Week 6: Mercy at the Cross”
40 Days of Mercy Week 5: Mercy out of dust
I’ve wanted for a long time to write a series of reflections on the poetry of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Nelly Sachs. That will have to wait for another time, but this week’s poem comes from a sequence of hers called “In the Habitations of Death”, where imagery of death, dust, longing and encounteringContinue reading “40 Days of Mercy Week 5: Mercy out of dust”
40 Days of Mercy: Week 4
This week’s poem comes from the largely forgotten African American poet James Weldon Johnson whose book “God’s Trombones” takes as its task to preserve the language and cadence of the African American preaching tradition. The collection begins in a prayer for mercy and then moves through Biblical history to arrive at the final judgement, aContinue reading “40 Days of Mercy: Week 4”
40 Days of Mercy Week 3: Mercy for the safe
This week I lost NBN connection and was locked out of my Google account while trying to buy an eBook of Ilya Kaminsky’s “Dancing in Odessa”. Today I found myself in the impossible position of trying to convey to an Optus consultant why it was no use telling me to download the Optus app toContinue reading “40 Days of Mercy Week 3: Mercy for the safe”
The Consolations of Writing 