Lenten Reflection Day 41 (April 3): UPHOLD (Isaiah 42:1-9).
ONG: The Wynans: Uphold Me: https://youtu.be/xkHfGzAcD6E
POEM: Rebecca Hazelton: Vow (excerpt): … When they looked at their options / it seemed there weren’t really that many / after all. They swore to uphold the bonds / and the principles …
QUOTE: Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl: People who have a religion should be glad, for not everyone has the gift of believing in heavenly things. You don’t necessarily even have to be afraid of punishment after death; purgatory, hell, and heaven are things that a lot of people can’t accept, but still a religion, it doesn’t matter which, keeps a person on the right path. It isn’t the fear of God but the upholding of one’s own honor and conscience. How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the while day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn’t know it must learn and find by experience that: “A quiet conscience makes one strong!”
Lenten Reflection Day 40 (April 2): CHOSEN (Isaiah 42:1-9).
SONG: Rytikal: Chosen: https://youtu.be/thNWIM5Oe6w
POEM: Uche Nduka: Untitled [When Shall Your Wounds] (excerpt): … daily your kingdom squeaks / and leaps to the starlight / it wants all of you / you of all and the music … you are the one the music / has chosen and whom strings call / twilight moans behind you / all you are you are all
QUOTE: Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
Lenten Reflection Day 39 (April 1): DELIVERANCE (Psalm 40:5-10).
SONG: Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell: Dueling Banjos (Deliverance 1972): https://youtu.be/p8t8uqEf6_A
POEM: Linda Hogan: The History of Red (excerpt): … A wildness / swam inside our mothers, desire through closed eyes, a new child / wearing the red, wet mask of birth, delivered into this land / already wounded, stolen and burned / beyond reckoning.
QUOTE: JRR Tolkien: Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat…giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
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.