Lenten Reflection Day 38 (Mar 31): LAW (Psalm 40:5-10).
SONG: This Side of the Law by Johnny Cash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GWe4sOIEeY&feature=youtu.be
POEM: Albert Goldbarth: Laws of the Universe (excerpt): … Well, we could: if the laws of the universe changed. It’s only the Earth that makes us so heavy. It’s only our lives that keep our lives / from floating off into the nothing.
QUOTE: Herman Hesse: For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers … In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured.
Lenten Reflection Day 37 (Mar 30): WRITTEN (Psalm 40:5-10).
SONG: Written in the Stars by Tinie Tempah ft Eric Turner: https://youtu.be/YgFyi74DVjc
POEM:Beatriz Miralles de Imperial, translated by Layla Benitez-James: “I write until my face is erased” – I write until my face is erased / only who I am no longer / can tell me
SECOND POEM:Nabina Das: Anima Writes a Letter Home (excerpt): Dear mother and father and old and young people of my home. Dear pets and weeds and flowers and footfalls. I write to you in a script speckled with time. I write to the language of a poet and many who chanted after her. I quote those verses which are laments, songs, praises, and warnings
QUOTE: Toni Morrison: If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
Lenten Reflection Day 36 (Mar 29): HERE I AM (Psalm 40:5-10).
SONG: Here I Am by Air Supply: https://youtu.be/B6rXBLRo_GU
POEM:Rumi: Here I Am (excerpt): … In the silence surrounding every call of ‘Allah’
Waits a thousand replies of ‘Here I am.’
QUOTE: Leo Tolstoy: Here I am alive, and it’s not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.
Lenten Reflection Day 35 (Mar 28): SACRIFICE (Psalm 40:5-10).
SONG: Sacrifice by Elton John: https://youtu.be/NrLkTZrPZA4
POEM:Muriel Rukeyser: The Book of the Dead: The Dam (excerpt): … All power is saved, having no end. Rises / in the green season, in the sudden season / the white the budded / and the lost… learning its power, conquering boundaries, able to rise blind in revolts of tide, broken and sacrificed to flow resumed.
QUOTE: Frederick Lewis Donaldson: The Seven Social Sins are: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle.
Lenten Reflection Day 34 (Mar 27): DEED (Psalm 40:5-10).
SONG: Deed I Do by Ella Fitzgerald: https://youtu.be/Vj4gbky1QCU
POEM: Heid Erdrich: The Theft Outright (excerpt): … Such as we were we gave most things outright (the deed of the theft was many deeds and leases and claim stakes / and tenure disputes and moved plat markers stolen still today . . .) We were the land before we were a people, earthdivers, her darling mudpuppies, so the stories go, or emerging, fully forming from flesh of earth …
QUOTE: Theodore Roosevelt: The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly …