Tag: God

A Lesson from “The Prophet” and a Preacher

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And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of
riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud,
outstretching His arms in lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving
His hands in trees. Kahlil Gibran, Collected Works, 149.

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, not hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
R. S. Thomas, “The Bright Field” in Selected Poems, 114

Both Gibran and Thomas, from very different backgrounds, remind us of the same truth. If you would know the divine reality that permeates creation, paying attention helps! Those of you who live in a “modern” nation like I do, know how easy it is to rush from one thing to the next.

My advice is to walk slowly and to sit for a while. Allow creation to permeate your senses. You may come away refreshed and a bit wiser.


a gentle zephyr
dances among the trees:
breath of the Spirit

Peace to you all. And as always, feel free to share this with others. LaMon

Reflection on Ageing

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I am in the L’s of my poetry books, so here is one by Thomas Lynch, a poetry-writing funeral director. My favorite poem by him is almost 40 lines and a little long for my blog. It is called “Local Heroes”. Perhaps you can find it online or purchase the book from which that poem and today’s is found, i.e. Walking Papers, published by W. W. Norton and Company.

Refusing at Fifty-two to Write Sonnets

It came to him that he could nearly count
How many Octobers he had left to him
In increments of ten or, say, eleven
Thus: sixty-three, seventy-four, eighty-five.
He couldn’t see himself at ninety-six–
Humanity’s advances not withstanding
In health, self-help, or New Age regimens–
What with his habits and family history,
The end he thought is nearer than you think.

The future, thus confined to its contingencies,
The present moment opens like a gift:
The balding month, the grey week, the blue morning,
The hour’s routine, the minute’s passing glance–
All seem like godsends now. And what to make of this?
At the end the word that comes to him is Thanks.

I am almost 75. I was diagnoses some 14 years ago with ALS. After a bout of serious depression, I turned to writing a thanksgiving list of people, places, events (major and minor) for which I was and remain thankful. The depression lifted–most days. 2 years later I was told that the ALS was gone, never to return! It was a wonderful day.

I am not thankful that I had ALS, but I am thankful that I learned the importance of thanksgiving. I continue to keep the list up, but I confess, more sporadically.

However just this last week, I read something about a library or a librarian. My thoughts wandered back to my childhood. I remembered discovering the Albertville Library–then located downtown. It was there that I fell in love with reading. So, I added that experience to my thanksgiving list.

I always feel closer to God or the divine whenever I am thankful. It is a wonderful pathway.

bluebird
nibbling at our feeders
thankful

As always feel free to share with a friend–and be thankful for those you have! Peace, LaMon

Poem Pathway #14

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the psalmist believed
appearances be damned–
God is just

The above haiku was inspired by reading Psalm 94. In this blog, I am repeating a theme which I mentioned earlier, but it is so important in the religious life of the Psalm writers, that I thought it worth mentioning again. One way to experience the smiling presence of the divine is to care for that for which God cares. In the case of Psalm 94, it includes the widow, the stranger, the orphan.

However, it was a poem by Michael Guite reflecting on Psalm 94 that crystalized my thoughts in this area again. The poem is found in David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms (London: Canterbury Press, 2021), p. 94.

Psalm 94: XCIV Deus ultionum

My saviour stands and keeps my soul serene
But also sends me back into the world
To speak his word and challenge the obscene

Injustices we take for granted, sold
As we are on systems that preserve
Our privileges and barter truth for gold,

Putting our souls to silence. We reserve
Our judgement, but the psalmist makes it clear
Justice is coming for God’s poor. We serve

Him best if we can also serve them here,
Rise up and take their part against the proud
Deliver them from harassment and fear.

We have been pietistic, quiet, cowed
But we must come out publicly and cry
For equal rights and justice, cry out loud.

May the presence of God be real in our lives as we love what God loves.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #13

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“Requiem for the Homeless Man” by Philip C. Kolin, Reading God’s Handwriting: Poems, Kaufmann Publishing, 2012.

He died of an overdose
of neglect; who cares
that he was one of the hidden
people exiled from smiles.

His sores were so heavy he had to lean them
against a wall, a bench, or a gate,
or let them fall
into the gutter where he belonged
who cares?

What’s left in his pockets is scarce
a few dollops of lint,
two or three mustard seeds,
a browning lily folded in two
like his life

His obituary made the evening winds
flying his soul to the bosom of God
who cares.

If you’ve read it only once, you might want to return to the beginning and read it again, aloud, slowly. Let the images sink into you heart and mind.

It is possible that Kolin was inspired by a parable that Jesus told in Luke 16:19-31 usually entitled “The Rich Man and Lazarus”. However, the genesis of the poem could just as easily have been in any American city from New York to San Francisco.

How can we be united with God. It sounds simple, i.e., care about what God cares about. Unfortunately, God’s name is used far too often, to justify what we and others care about. I find great help in the life of Jesus, where over and over again, it is the poor, the outcast, the suffering who attract his attention and care.

Kolin’s poem can remind us that caring for the homeless, is God-like care. We touch the divine when we care for the poor.

A haiku from several years ago:

remember this truth
voiceless poor are dear to God…
seek their wellbeing

Peace,
LaMon

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Pathway Poem #11

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As I continue to work my way through my books of poetry, I have come the last J. It is A Night without Armor by the famous singer-songwriter, Jewel Kilcher. It contains poems from her journals as she grew up in Alaska. The poem that moved me most was next to the last one, so written, I imagine, in her twenties.

God Exists Quietly

God exists quietly.

When I sit still and contemplate
the breeze that moves upon me
I can hear Him.

For hours I would lay
flat upon the meadows
stare at the
endless field of blue sky
and revel in
the divine placement of all things.

I would walk alone
in the woods and let my mind wander
freely, stumble across theories
on the origins of myself
and all things.

In nature I knew all things had
their place. None supreme,
none insignificant and so
great peace would come to me
as I fit neatly in the folds
between dawn and twilight.
Living in sync with the rhythm
of the earth, eating what
we grew, warming
ourselves by the coal fire,
creating
myself in the vast silence that existed
between the wild mountains of Alaska
and our front porch.

I grew to love the
Nature of god.
I knew Him best not in churches, but
alone with the sun shining on me through the trees

It birthed a space in me
that would continue to
crave the sacred
and demand sanctity
as my life took flight
and lit out to travel
the world.

It has grounded me
and held me steady
in the strong winds
that have caried me
so far from
where I have been.

Prayer is the greatest
swiftest
ship my heart could sail upon.

I am presently reading a book that I think the Jewel who wrote this poem would resonate with. It is The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature by David George Haskell. It is written in beautiful poetic prose. He would agree with Jewel that “all things had their place.”

Jewel’s experience of what some of us might call the divine in nature created in her a craving for the sacred and a demand for sanctity. It does not happen to everyone, but for many it has. So, again, I am encouraged to spend time immersed in the world of nature.

The title of this poem, so impressed me that I too wrote a poem in 2002. I have written other non-haiku poems, but trust me, none deserve printing! I share this one only because Jewel’s poem inspired it.

Unhurried, unharried, God exists quietly
Impassible Silence weaving improbable dreams
into the fabric of life lightly.

As always I welcome comments and encourage you, that if you find this blog helpful, you share it with others, welcoming them to follow it as also.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #10

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I have been working through my poetry books alphabetically, with one or two exceptions. I came to poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I was sorely tempted to pull one of my favorites from his poems. I did not, primarily because I would have had to spend way too much time trying to explain obscure words and phrases. Plus, reading his poetry aloud can be challenging because he has a unique rhythm scheme. If you want to take a look at my favorites, you can find them online; “God’s Grandeur”, “Pied Beauty”, and “As Kingfisher’s Catch Fire, Dragonflies, Draw Flame”.

Today’ poem is by Rod Jellema in A Slender Grace: Poems. One critic noted that Jellema “is a mystic…[but] he never loses touch with the earth. He is a poet of deep and humane good sense who’s infused with an abiding awareness of the holy.” [Andrew Hudgins, from a blurb on the back of the book.]

I have read this poem several times and will read it again. It seems full of meaning and mystery. Read it aloud slowly a couple of times and see if you agree.

We Used to Grade God’s Sunsets
from the Lost Valley Beach

Why we really watched we never said.
The play of spectral light, but maybe also
the coming dark, and the need to trust
that the fire dying down before us
into Lake Michigan’s cold waves
would rise again behind us.
Our arch and witty critiques
covered our failures to say what we saw.

The madcap mockery of grading God as though
He were a struggling student artist
(Cut loose, strip it down, study Matisse
and risk something, something unseen–
C-plus, keep trying–that sort of thing)
only hid our fear of His weather
howling through the galaxies. We humored
a terrible truth: that nature gives us hope
only in flashes, split seconds, one
at a time, fired in a blaze of beauty.

Picking apart those merely actual sunsets
we stumbled into knowing the artist’s job:
to sort out, then to seize and work an insight
until its transformed into permanence.
And God, brushing in for us the business
of clouds and sky, really is a hawker
of cliches, a sentimental hack as a painter.
He means to be. He leaves it to us
to catch and revise, to find the forms
of how and who in this world we really are
and would be, to see how much promise there is
on a hurtling planet, swung on a thread
and saved by nothing but grace.

If like me, you got to the startling end and thought, “wow”–and then went back to read it again. The poem just keeps growing on me and hope it will on you as well.

source of all being
plants mystery in the world–
survey the garden

As always, feel free to share this blog and encourage others to follow.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #9

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According to the Anglican calendar, today is the day that Evelyn Underhill is to be remembered. Perhaps more than any other person, Evelyn Underhill has helped me to learn about and appreciate the path of mysticism. I have over 25 of her books. She was one of the three persons about whom I wrote in my dissertation.

Though she published two books of poetry, it was not her primary writing style. Nevertheless, since I am presently sharing poems that point to a pathway to God, here is one that you mind find helpful. It is found in Immanence: A Book of Verses by Evelyn Underhill. This is the first poem in the book and it is entitled “Immanence”.

I come in the little things
Saith the Lord:
Not borne on morning wings
Of majesty, but I have set My Feet
Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat
That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod,
There do I dwell, in weakness and in power;
Not broken or divided, saith our God!
In your strait garden plot I come to flower:
Above your porch My Vine
Meek, fruitful, doth entwine;
Wait, at the threshold, Love’s appointed hour.

I come in little things
Saith the Lord:
Yea! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet
Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes
That peep from out the brake, I stand confest.
On every nest
Where feathery Patience is content to brood
And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize
Of motherhood–
There doth My Godhead rest.

I come in little things,
Sayeth the Lord:
My starry wings
I do forsake,
Love’s highway of humility to take:
Meekly I fit my stature to your need,
In beggar’s part
About your gate I shall not cease to plead–
As man, to speak to man–
Till by such art
I shall achieve My Immemorial Plan
Pass the low lintel of the human heart.

This poem was published in 1912, so forgive her use of male language in the fourth line from the bottom! The point of the poem, which I have taken to heart, is that God creates various pathways by which we might find God and that God might fill us with divine love and joy and peace.

sitting with the trees
by a gently flowing stream–
patient rootedness

Now taken a moment and read the poem one more time. I would love to hear what your favorite line or image is in this poem. If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine!

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Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #8

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Tom Hennen was born and lives in Minnesota. Many of his poems are meditations on life in the upper Midwest. Today’s poem, originally found in Love for Other Things, looks at the prairie land he cherishes. I suggest you might want to read this one twice. Listen to the words, see the images, understand the feeling of the poet. Everything flows from the poem’s wonderful first line. But don’t allow you rational side to argue with it. If you can’t say, “Yes,” perhaps you can at least wish it were so.

From a Country Overlooked.

There are no creatures you cannot love.
A frog calling at God
From the moon-filled ditch
As you stand on the country road in the June night.
The sound is enough to make the stars weep
With happiness.
In the morning the landscape green
Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.
The day is carried across its hours
Without any effort by the shining insects
That are living their secret lives.
The space between the the prairie horizons
Makes us ache with its beauty.
Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue
To the farthest cold dark in the universe.
The cottonwood also talks to you
Of breeze and speckled sunlight.
You are at home in these
great empty places
along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.
You are comfortable in this spot
so full of grace and being
that it sparkles like jewels
spilled on water.

Toward the end he speaks of the spot he sees as being “full of grace and being”. Such language is a reminder that meditation on nature is a way to connect with the inner Reality revealed through what we can see (and not simply overlook). It is a pathway to experiencing the presence of God.

swollen Cahaba–
roaring into the silence
of the waiting woods

Peace,
LaMon

Following Circumstances into God’s Presence

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This morning I read a story in The Celtic Book of Days by Ray Simpson. It is a reminder that experiencing the presence of the divine may be as simple as being faithful to the circumstances of our lives. Here is the story.

When St. Mungo grew up he became a priest. Perhaps he had dreams of being called to some glorious, sacrificial task. Instead, he was called to visit Fergus, an ailing, old priest who lived about seven miles upstream.

When he arrived, he was dismayed at the weakening condition of the old priest. Mungo stayed with him that night. He prepared supper for him and listened to his stories of his home on the river Clyde. A church had been established there many years earlier by the famous missionary, Ninian. Toward midnight, Fergus had a seizure and died in Mungo’s arms. His last words were, “Promise you will bury me at the church hallowed by Ninian.”

Faithful to his promise, Mungo put Fergus’s body in a wagon to be pulled by oxen. He traveled a day’s journey to the little church by the Clyde. He found the folks who lived there gathered at the church. They were very sad, for they had had no priest for several years.

At the funeral the next day, Mungo was moved by the despair of the people. He knew he could not return home. He believed that God was drawing him to stay and build up this little community. Soon his mother joined him. She called the community “Eglais Cu” (the loved church) because the people lived there as a family. Today, her name for the community is pronounced “Glasgow”.

Following the wooing of God will not always result in something that becomes significant to or remembered by the world, but it likely will result in something important to us as we experience the divine Presence in our lives.

eternal God
holy Presence wooing us
stay attentive

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Peace,
LaMon

Trees

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trusting like a tree:
an olive tree in God’s house
always cared for

The haiku was inspired by a reading in the Psalms this morning–Psalm 52:8-9. Today is the birthday of one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver. I turned to her book “Thirst” {Beacon Press, 2006) and found this poem that I had been impressed with on the first reading some years ago:

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.”

Nature is a wonderful pathway to God. As we enter the Fall season, I want to be more attentive to the trees–those changing color and those seemingly eternally green. Our attention may be rewarded with a vision of God’s beauty. And perhaps our lives will shine just a little more.

As always, if you enjoy any of my blogs, feel free to share them with others.

Peace,
LaMon