reflecting: Ash Wednesday

Growing up going to Catholic school, it never really occurred to me how odd it is that so many Christians show up at work or school on some seemingly random Wednesday with a dark smudge on their foreheads. The more I think about it the stranger it is. It can certainly remind us of our mortality (the whole “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” thing). It marks off a season of penance for that hard-partying during Mardi Gras the night before?

Ash Wednesday is a pretty enigmatic holiday for Christ-followers. Historically, it marks off the beginning of a Lent season, a lean period before Easter, which in itself is wrought with paradox. The word “Lent” comes from the word meaning “Spring.” This is a season of longer days, abundant flourishing, and a brilliant turn of seasonal weather. But it is also during this change that we’re asked to stop for a second and consider where we’ve come from, and who we are. 

Perhaps its only by having a big, sloppy smudge placed right between our eyes that we are stopped from jumping into the feast of spring by observing a period of fasting and repentance. It is this forty day period of hesitation and evaluation that slows us down enough to see where we are, what we depend on most, who we are becoming, and where we are headed.

One of famed poet T.S. Eliot’s most renowned poems reflects on Ash Wednesday and Lent’s ability to do just this, letting him re-center himself. When he starts to till this ground, he turns up all sorts of mis-directions that require acknowledgement and repentance: from false hopes, to distorted love and vain wastes of time. Eliot’s prayer starts the Lenten season by entreating that God may “Teach us to care and not to care, Teach us to sit still;” that we may be reoriented in our wants and needs and freed from anxiety enough to be present to God.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
[T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday, 1930.]

Let us take this time to realize where our loves lie, where our time goes, who and what we are dependent on, and where we are headed.

Let us see the new creation of the springtime through the smudged realization of our own brokenness, mortality, and lack.

Let us follow Jesus through this season, to the cross and into the resurrected, free, and abundant life he made possible for us and gives to us.

           

processing: Ash Wednesday- T.S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)

Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessed face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss

Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

processing: The Wild Rose- Wendell Berry

The Wild Rose

(written by Wendell Berry for his wife)

Sometimes hidden from me

in daily custom and in trust,

so that I live by you unaware

as by the beating of my heart.

Suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose blooming at the edge

of thicket, grace and light

where yesterday was only shade,

and once again I am blessed,

choosing again

what I chose before.

processing: Preaching, Praying & Paying Attention

The other day in preaching class we explored the link between preaching, praying, & paying attention. We heard from this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver (The Summer Day) which she manages to move from pondering the psalm-like wonder of created-ness to the child-like fascination with a particular bug and a particular fleck of sugar. I wish I had a more immediate link in my brain and worship between praying, paying minute attention, and falling on my face, "idle and blessed." Let this be the case with "this one wild and precious life." Amen.

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean--

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is is you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

processing: John Bunyan's 'Who Would True Valour See'

Who would true valour see,

Let him come hither;

One here will constant be,

Come wind, come weather

There’s no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent

To be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round

With dismal stories

Do but themselves confound;

His strength the more is.

No lion can him fright,

He’ll with a giant fight,

He will have a right

To be a pilgrim.

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend

Can daunt his spirit,

He knows he at the end

Shall life inherit.

Then fancies fly away,

He’ll fear not what men say,

He’ll labor night and day

To be a pilgrim.

jamming: Aaron Strumpel- Elephants

Tracklisting:
Procession
One Twenty One
Blow Out the Wick
Melee
Fifty One
Family
Right Thru
In Babylon
Won't Stop
This Can't Last
After
First Love

I've been gumming on this album for a few weeks now. One thing I'm struck by is how once you establish "a vocabulary" for the psalter (whether by reading or hearing or re-hearing), you are really ingest it and it manifest itself very readily. Last night at church we discussed Psalm 121's Ascent question, "Where does my help come from?" Strumpel answers this question, but elaborates with texture and complexity.

The beauty and the claws for this record are in how much contrast and raw energy is presented. These are anything but straight-forward ballads. Rather we are assaulted by a dizzying array of drum loops, cello, muted trumpet, mandolin, guitars, and vocal layering. While his previous project, Enter the Worship Circle, took definite steps within and beyond the genre of acoustic folk/praise music, this album, though dissonant at times, treads pleasant new ground. It is the difference between a sketch book full of carefully crafted pencil drawings and a chaotic mixed media installation- darkness, despair, blood, dirt, noise, light, contrast, whimsy, glory.

When Strumpel wails, "Create in me a clean heart oh God..." in Fifty One amid cooing background vocals, we believe him and understand his sincere despair and hope. Take time with this bunch of songs. While pleasingly credible as a mere indie production, it is also a masterful and vulnerable worship piece.

Aaron Strumpel: One Twenty One by cebreslin

Aaron Strumpel: Fifty One by cebreslin

Aaron Strumpel: Right Thru by cebreslin

praying: Teresa of Avila- Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands,
Yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes,
You are his body.

Christ has no body now but ours,

No hands, no feet on earth but ours,

Ours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.

Ours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Ours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Ours are the hands,
Ours are the feet,

Ours are the eyes.
We are his body.

jamming: Roman Candle- Oh Tall Tree In The Ear

Track listing:
1. Eden Was a Garden
2. One More Road
3. Why Modern Radio is A-Ok
4. They Say
5. Big Light
6. Sonnet 46
7. Heartbeat, A
8. Woke Up This Morning
9. I Was a Fool
10. Starting From Scratch
11. Early Aubade

I must say that this release was a very gratifying offering of great fun. I would describe Roman Candle not in "sort of a poor man's ______" terms but rather as a local version of _______ (josh ritter, dylan, wilco, whiskeytown, etc...). This description is useful not just because they happen to be local, but because "local" (at least around here) connotes something of a romance and a charm not evident in larger, further-off, or more well-known entities. This romance pervades the entire album, starting with the title (taken from the opening of the following Rilke sonnet).

Tree arising! O pure ascendance!
Orpheus Sings! Towering tree within the ear!
Everywhere stillness, yet in this abeyance:
seeds of change and new beginnings near.

Another facet of RC's charm includes the other pole of Skip's wit. He seemlessly spans the worlds of high poetry/art and the grit and grime of back roads jukebox honkey tonk. "Modern Radio" (perhaps the most standout of tracks), puts this deftness on display. Comically and unpretentiously we are fed the narrative of love loss through the lens of a standard jukebox tears-in-beers encounter with a "buddy out on parole." The brilliance comes in the assertion that modern radio's acceptance lies precisely in its utter incapacity to hurt, thrill, or remind. This is the stuff of great commentary and fantastic wordplay wrapped in the package of a foot-tapping folk song.

I was down at my favorite watering hole
with a buddy of mine that was out on parole
and we were flipping through the jukebox,
talking how we'd been and how we are.

He'd got a library card and he'd pierced his tongue
and a buddy in prison had turned him onto Neil Young
and he thought that it'd be best to play some for the entire bar.

Now he didn't know, but while he was in jail,
I'd had my heart broken by a woman to wondrous to tell
and we'd fallen in love to half the songs that jukebox played.

So when he flattened his dollar on the side of the machine
and I saw "Comes a Time" come on the karaoke screen
I knew there was a couple things I had forgot to say:

Don't play Neil Young
Don't play Van Morrison
Just let some high school emo band start versing and chorusing
Because there's no way it will break my heart as far as I can see
and that's why modern radio is A OK with me.

He said a pop song used to be a powerful thing,
you could turn on the a.m. and John Lennon would sing
or Frank Sinatra would be talking to all of the girls.

And you could think like a hawk or think like a dove
or think of a winter afternoon when you fell in love
and ten songs on a record sounded like a string of pearls.

Now my buddy rattled on till an hour'd gone by
and I thought to spit a mouthful of beam in his eye,
maybe leave him for dead, but a friend is a friend to stay.

So I listened to him talk about Johnny and June
And how "I don't know where I stand" is a true love tune
I bought another round just in time to hear him say:

They don't play Sam Cooke
They don't play Merle Watson
They just trade some Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham for a broke-down Datsun.
And there's no way it'll break my heart as far as I can see -
And that's why modern radio is a sack of monkeys to me.

He said it makes me so mad I want to get up and shout it
and I smiled and said I hadn't thought that much about it
We walked out the street and parted ways.

I might've gone to a movie, but my money was spent
so I went straight home, and Lord knows where he went
but I wrote myself a letter to all modern dj's:

Don't play Bob Dylan
Don't play "Loose Ends"
Don't play anybody that's ever read Sir Patrick Spens
Because there's no way it'll break my heart as far as I can see -
And that's why modern radio is a-ok with me.

Mother's Day Poem

Dedicated to my dedicated mom. Found it on Don Miller's blog, sums up the thankfulness and inadequacy have and feel for my mom's love. Thanks for your elaborate and overabundant care for Rach & me. Thanks for your sacrifice and selflessness. And for teaching me a little about how God loves.

The Lanyard –Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

processing: Reconciliation Poetry

Both the tapestry and poem were part of the "Reconciling All Things" Art
Exhibit over the last month at the Div School.

Easter Garment
Gather He does unto Himself threads of human life
The sorrows, the sores, the aches, the wars
But more than just the strife

While He gathers those who hunger, He gathers grains of wheat
While He gathers those who thirst, He gathers waters sweet
While He gathers those alone, He gathers welcome places
While He gathers those exposed, He gathers sheltered places

Unto Himself He gathers counsel for the inebriated
Unto Himself He gathers keys for the incarcerated
Unto Himself He gathers courage for the latent
Unto Himself He gathers panaceas for the patient
Unto Himself He gathers sages for the fool

Reconcile all things He does with His finger, frame, and spool
Into a Holy garment revealed on Easter day.
All things reconcile with His love, his life, his way.
Reconcile all things with His love, his life, his way.
All things are reconciled with His love, His life, His way.

Emily Isabelle Kroeger
Duke Divinity School
March 27, 2007

Above All, Trust in the Slow Work of God.

Poem by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
-- that is to say, grace --
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.

Amen.

Moist, with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul.

"By miracles exceeding power of man,/
He faith in some, envy in some begat,/
For, what weak spirits admire, ambitious hate:/
In both affections many to Him ran./
But O ! the worst are most, they will and can,/
Alas ! and do, unto th' Immaculate,/
Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a fate,/
Measuring self-life's infinity to span,/
Nay to an inch. Lo ! where condemned He/
Bears His own cross, with pain, yet by and by/
When it bears him, He must bear more and die./
Now Thou art lifted up, draw me to Thee,/
And at Thy death giving such liberal dole,/
Moist, with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul.
-Stanza 5: The Crucifixion from John Donne's La Corona

Blood of The Lamb - Billy Bragg & Wilco

Songs of John, Bill, & Salvador.

We ran through Song of Songs in OT class. Beautiful. Erotic. Holy. Scary to interpret. The image of encounter with God in a physical way is intimidating, it is sometimes much easier for me to relegate God to the clouds than deal with fleshly, corporeal depictions (irony: Word became Flesh).

Three more or less contemporary pieces of art (poetry, song, painting) ring this bell for me:

1. Dr. Steinmetz brilliantly (per usual) quoted a poem by John Donne (who himself toes the uncomfortable line between smitten romantic and clergy) to illustrate the relentless and ultimately irresistible pursuit of God towards man. The language is brutal & graphic.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

2. This VOL song got Slow Dark Train yanked from the shelves of your local Family Christian back in the day, I wonder why?

Honey, I wanna attack your flesh with abandon
I wanna look for your fruits I wanna put my hands on them
Pump up the thermostat beneath your skin
I wanna uncover your swimming hole and dive right in
I'm a moth when I fly to the light of my doom
You wrap me up in your love Love cocoon
There's an explosion of grace dripping in my bed
Is it somewhere else? Is it in my head?
Is it weak and tender? Is it rough and ready?
Is it fragile and delicate? Is it rock-hard and steady?
Now the world keeps on banging, and they come and go
It's just a part of their scenery A part of their show
But I got this wedding band wrapped around my finger
Honey, I'll be your poet Your gunslinger
Some call it freedom Some call it shackle
Honey, let's get together and build a tabernacle
of holy flesh and holy mirth
Let's take what's coming and enjoy every inch worth
Now the world keeps on banging They come and go
It's just a part of their scenery A part of their show

3. Dr. Davis showed us a couple of these Dali prints. Never saw them before. Beautiful and striking. Simple, pure, & graceful. Provocative & challenging.

A Sabbath Poem by Wendell Berry

To sit and look at light-filled leaves
May let us see, or seem to see,
Far backward as through clearer eyes
To what unsighted hope believes:
The blessed conviviality
That sang Creation's seventh sunrise,

Time when the Maker's radiant sight
Made radiant every thing He saw,
And every thing He saw was filled
With perfect joy and life and light.
His perfect pleasure was sole law;
No pleasure had become self-willed.

For all His creatures were His pleasures
And their whole pleasure was to be
What He made them; they sought no gain
Or growth beyond their proper measures,
Nor longed for change or novelty.
The only new thing could be pain.