SPIRITUAL LIFE |
OUR LORD’S PRAYER Loving, eternal Father of us all, ~ Blessed and praised with so many holy names! ~ Open our hearts and eyes to the light of your Kingdom, Inspire our minds and hands till the world of souls Can work your Will in harmony with the Heavens. Fling wide for us the door of your compassion, And help us to trust the wisdom of your giving; And as we learn to long for what is good, To face our folly, and make our recompense, Grace us with Truth: We all are the One Life; Forgiving each other in love is the end of fear. Through the enlightened mind, Through the compassionate heart, Through the subjected will, Draw us into your Glory and our joy! Amen, amen, amen. Rev. Pam Crane ......................................................................................... ENCOUNTER Mid-August. It is now night. The little town Is scattered with happy light. He turns to her he loves In the attic room - ‘Go down And bring the water, darling, That we must Take home.’ She gathers bottles, kisses him And leaves Amid the sleepy murmur of settling doves Under the hotel eaves, Managing the uncomfortable stair To a thin door, Steep paths, And warm velvet Pyrenean air. The hot day’s diesel Dissipates. The café-bars Reel with visiting Irish, blarney arms Around their mates. She skirts foreign cars Down into the main street, Into the swell Of pilgrims, past the late Bright kiosks, the emporia; She has let her feet Feel their own way, carry her Into the heart of Lourdes, Into the evening throng, A people-river in which she is borne along. And it is then Amid the images Of plastic basilicas, and Bernadettes, Candles, rosaries and grotto sets, Of Mary in roses, Mary pierced with swords, Mary in flashing rainbows, Mary on clouds That amid the crowds She is met; and entered. It is then she knows This evening is extraordinary Because on her walk for water She is one with Mary. The arms open wide; she is God’s daughter. Into the darkness she is streaming love Out of a double heart And all the people can see as she passes by (Could they perceive such things) It is Heaven’s eye That lights on them And the hands, the fingers That pour forth crippled souls’ healing Lift from her like wings. She has been set apart; And the ineffable sweetness of Our Lady lingers Even when she has entered the Domain, Lightly touching the lonely, Those in pain, The nuns, the nurses, patient volunteers, Giving Her love untiring To the hopeless, to the devout Clutching their souvenirs At the holy spring, To the merely curious and to those barely living The infinite healing loveliness streams out. Mary is in her as she fills each flask At the spigots, Mary behind her eyes In the torchlight. Around her the old rocks and worn buildings rise. She is not allowed to make an offering, Even to ask If it would be right To save the basilica and its crumbling steeple. Words come onto her own lips silently, ‘Buildings are not important. Only people.’ She and Our Lady turn to make their way Out of the town. Now she is climbing steps that she came down When she was still alone. ‘Look by your feet!’ There in the stone Is a perfect image of Mary and her Child. In the pitch dark on her PDA The picture is drawn and filed. Then, the journey complete, Mary is gone. Up in the hotel room, herself again, She hands holy water to the dearest of men, Is kissed, Has been, as ever, missed. How was she back so late Leaving him so painfully long to wait Instead of coming straight From the Domain? ... Even to him, In her transfigured state, Can she explain? ________________________________________ AMOR CHRISTI My bond with you Is not the binding of a superstition - I have not said ‘To guarantee good luck I’ll follow You’ - I do not wear your symbol as a charm. My care of you Is not the care that comes of obligation - I will not pay Attention to you by man’s calendar, Nor do the will of any less than you. My work for you Is driven not by greed for recognition Nor by the need To compensate for some great weight of sin - Because you ask me, I do everything. My words for you Cannot be pages of propitiation - Awe and fear, Eulogies, interminable prayer, Begging and preaching, you will never hear. And when I greet you I will not bow, or kneel, or bend my head - I cannot meet Your steady gaze that way; I will not turn My face, nor stay away, My Friend, From your embrace. ......................................................................................... A SONG TO GOD If I would sing a song to God Then I must sing a song for Man - And I must sing it from the heart As freely as an angel can. If I would sing a song for Man, Then I must sing for every Tree - For every leaf that breathes my breath, And every branch that shelters me. If I would sing of Man and Tree The song must be of Sun and Rain, Of feeding bird and humble bee Who sow the green of wood and plain. If I would sing of Tree and Rain, Then I must hymn the dancing Sea Who pounds the land from stone to sand, Whose silver gifts of cloud are free. If I would sing of cloud and Sea, I serenade the mighty Moon; For in her palm are Storm and Calm, Her children with the Lord of Noon. If I would sing of Sea and Moon I lift my praises to the Sun Who governs all from Spring to Fall, The Life, the joy in everyone. If I would sing of Moon and Sun, The silver Queen, the golden King Whose light reveals what God conceals In every heart - to God I sing! (finished 28th August 2003, 07h16, York) ............................................................................ ARACHNID Love me, love my god I go in fear of peace I promise me Do not unravel him he at the heart of death in wait for me Who preys on all men's prayer I web the world he with my spinneret Up fly and catch Promise and arthropomorphic dream Star set in a man's skull His morning beads a myriad I count With him we tell And wait for the updraught dawn dusk underwing O silver god-hand I Make to be at the last enlaced and all Manner of many Legged unwary other me o give us manna Before making love to the Last rose o beautifully bind us Before the real Unapprehended fang of our own myth grinds in ......................................................................................... CONQUEST Sing songs of the dark font where I was named, And of her I seek, Who comes from the same chill God-house and milked with me And who was named Her name and my name, Silence, We one and many. We women weave still our intricate small spells, Those webs of time To catch the best of the world's uneasy beauty. The thread is hard And wonderful wild and delicate In our hands. There is You, though, with power to ease, always, To manipulate My each most dedicated tapestry. Your day dawns, Your shadow on the loom, and I can do nothing. I can no longer walk in the mind-forest I made And reach for her, My sister down every avenue waiting. Caught in my maze of Little grey rags when You with your laser-light Oh You with your great gold humming shield before you Fend them off in the dark undergrowth To cower Abject and unprotected, I gone from them. ......................................................................................... COME TO MY HILLS Come to my hills. Come with me in a dream; You'll not remember. My lonely power extends through every singing fibre of the wind. See, out of the mist swim mountains towards my fingers. Out of the shadow of clouds come lakes! Facing the vastness, watch me summon the wind. It will blow through your heart and mine till my eyes are seeing crystals and you are stilled by the springing ice in your blood. There is no horizon. To the white edge of time I have brought you to know what I know of the wide power that quickens the world. Take it, take it and keep it. The darkness comes softly between us from the forgotten valleys, bringing stars. There is no light anywhere; you will not remember. But here in the stillness of night you have known the power, you have lifted the wheel of heaven that lies in my arm; you have touched the skin of God, and looked at me. Long out of your dream, you shall look at me so again, one day, in a room; pause, sensing the reason ... ... and not remember. ......................................................................................... GOD-FEARING I saw the god in the mist that moved And in the ground I heard him. I felt his fear along my limbs, And in my womb I feared him. He showed me where his beauty was And where the truth lay sleeping Under a blighted tree. I wept, And all mankind was weeping. I wept for eyes that could not see because they sought a reason, And hands that murdered God - dead to Their terrible blind treason. The trees I love! The skies I love! I mourn for them and cry, For axe and flame are on the tree, And wreckage in the sky. And limbs are lost in ugliness, And passions lurk and fester. The night still flowers sweet for man - How long since he has blessed her! A red moon holds for him no fire, The earth shakes him no fear. Poor lovely stupid man, what wrath Can prove the god is near? Must stars claw out your eyes, and trees Bear down to bring you to your knees? Must grasses shrivel under rain, And lightning rot the standing grain, And worlds be hammered into dust, The victims of incurred disgust? My fear went into the mist that moved; The god was in my hearing. A tremor passed through the earth I loved And all mankind was fearing. ......................................................................................... ORPHEA I am Orphea. Creatures come to me. I sing, they come, I am their healing. I am mother of All the love-lorn, I am a tree For every bird. I am a rock For those who drown, I am the house Of all the homeless, I am the hand That feeds the hungry, I am the path The lost may follow, I am a fire To warm the lonely. But for Orphea Who is a haven? Who will comfort Orphea's hunger? The breast of a hill So dry and hard? Orphea roofless Who will shelter? The winter trees Or a draughty sky? Who will sing to her? Who loves Orphea? Only the sun Whose arms are generous, Never the moon, So cold and contrary. Orphea yearns, The moon disdains her. There is no cure For Orphea's sorrow. Who will comfort The lonely singer? ......................................................................................... THE LITTLE GODS LAUGH Man, you know, is no longer Man. I've seen Unlaboured efforts on the part of God To hold him up to ridicule. I wish He would Be wrathful - compassionate - something in between ... But not so rude. He falls away In vast dudgeon, whirled in a breath of stars. Exasperating little Man! You had your way; And may it do you good to appal Him grey At the godless genius of motor-cars! Abandoned to angels - Mercury and Michael, Lucifer who likes us - we carry on abusing The beauty we thought we could understand, foolishly choosing (Instead of leaping naked) a faulty cycle And hat-losing. How we amuse Our disconcerting audience, and grieve! They must be disappointed, but the means they use In making up for this are sheer abuse Of all a god is able to achieve; For why not work some sort of miracle? Why not make us good all of a sudden, Instead of watching every day to see the blood In us from auricle to ventricle Stagnate to mud? Of course, they can. But these are not the gods to whom we pray If we are sufficiently perceptive as to plan Posthumous privilege. Oh, He began, As soon as we decaying, to wander away And left us to the lesser deities Who, I am much afraid, have little mercy Now that God has turned His back on us, so tersely Non-committal - "That's the way it is. I let them curse me." Truth-and-Beauty Finding failure bitter and more alone, Alone with a Mistake among the stars. "Oh shoot me Happy with if any perfect one! In self-extinction, what an end of duty! Magnificent! I am Creation's quick, And nothing now is perfect save my being; Deleting that, nothing perfection, and therefore (agreeing That ultimate pure perfection is what I seek) Perfection - Nothing." The little gods laugh. They pick up their lightnings, greased in a flash, and hurled Through Immortality (unwounded as a loch Showered with pine-pins at the brink) to scoff Omnipotence, void of self-rule and runaway world. ......................................................................................... RING-PASS-NOT No greater darkness is there known Than when the Old Malefic One Intrudes upon the Over-Sun, Between the soul and Heaven's throne. Yet every soul on circling Earth Is core and crown of radiant Light And all are glorious in the Night To bring divinity to birth. For under Saturn's murmuring ring The little will for right or wrong May listen for a mightier song And join itself to Everything ... Caught in a leaden chord of Time, If it is silent, patient, still The soul will pulse to its Father's Will, A twin to Love and Joy sublime. Without the ancient Dweller there No little Sun with feet of flame Could play the holy hero's game With ladders of the Reaper's hair. Over the wall of dark and death We climb (or else die whimpering there) - And find it a triumphant stair To Lightning and the Holy Breath. O Sun of Suns, O Mystery, You wait for us beyond the wheel, Spinning our reason to conceal Your hands upon our history. O Mind of Minds, our journey's end, Your wisdom set the Ring-Pass-Not Where men become the Fools of God Or of the self. Here waits our Friend. ......................................................................................... PORTA COELI 1. I looked on Jupiter by night Too large, a red and dusky light Which in a spasm spread the sky To blind, engulf and terrify. 2. I stand with others in a room; Out of the window all is still. Nothing but water meeting sky. My Master calls beyond the sill. 3. We gather in a holy place To pray. I see my Lady's face And figure stream with sparkling light And I am lifted to the height Of floating incense through Her grace Higher than prayer. All who see Wonder, and wait for prophecy. 4. We reap the whirlwind. Houses fall. Amid the gale, my Lord I call - "This is your house, and we are yours! Stilled instantly, the storm withdraws. 5. Men sit or stand, await the Word. "You must seek out your chosen Lord, You are the one to forge the bond Till He embraces you beyond. Yours are the words, the striving love Requited in the realms above." ......................................................................................... THE HEALER Candles do flare, my friend; The dark responds To the mind's fingering. Even the fear you feel Is very real, Alone, and walking Motionless up a dream of stairs Leading to pain and sorrow where she lies Too close to her forebears. The night may come to your call; One flame may form A spire, and a woman live. If you are wise, however, you will give All thanks to God you did not lose yourself. ......................................................................................... SHE WHO HAS COME THROUGH To be a light to lighten the Gentiles He set you in the midst of speaking women - Women who sleeping speak, Who are waged by war - And the glory of His people Israel Is your keepsake As an old god marches through Faversham In his sleep, in his sleep, And they turn where his head turns From fire and cloud, Bespoke women who turn to the old stones - Blind pumice, circle of basalt - Unable to watch you rise In full Sun. ......................................................................................... GOD KNOWS ABOUT ANEMONES God knows about anemones, He knows about the winkle, He knows about the night, and why The constellations twinkle. He knows about the mother moon Who lullabies the river And rocks the cradle of the deep Asleep in sheets of silver. He knows where all the starry dust In dusky earth is hidden, And why the tiny turtle seeks The sea unseen, unbidden. He knows about volcanoes, and The sparrow in the gutter He even knows why Frances felt The urge to make some butter! ......................................................................................... HE MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN IN GREEN PASTURES ... Some thing is sheep-dogging me. It drives me over the field of my desires Crouching patch-eyed at the boundary, A swift snarl plugging each gap in the wires. Every circle I make toward the outer sky After the worn ground, is nipped back In a belly-streak, determined I shall die Of circumscription; not for any lack Of tears for what I might be, me and my brethren - We have huddled askance and shot star-like apart To confuse and out-flank our enemy; but whether in Sheer stupidity or lack of heart We fail, and are whipped in by a whistle, who knows. We stare silly at the same trough and the same tree In the same chewed patch where nothing new grows, Consoling ourselves with familiarity. We know the way so well. We have, amid usual mayhem, Rutted here, hating our poor fellows; The hound’s eye rolls reflected in each of them. Our only heaven is one clump of willows Under an April rainbow - as I mate In the dog-watch the unsuspected eye Snapping each vain attempt to procreate A vision of free hills and a different sky ... I would stand outside the fence, you see. I would lean there, Once out, not escape. I would not like to strand My old company, but show them the fresh air And all the patterns vanishing from my hand. ......................................................................................... HYMN Let there be love for every living form, Love for the coal, the diamond and the tree; Love for all eyes, for star, for meteor-swarm - Glory be to God for all of Three. Let there be life for every loving thing, Life for the Light that out of Glory grew; Life for the Harmony my soul can sing - Glory be to God for all of Two. Let there be Fire for every holy heart, Fire understanding; Fire for duty done; Fire for the rapture of God's rejoining part - Glory be to God for All of One. ......................................................................................... ICHTHUS Help me - oh help me endure. A touch from your finger-tip, fierce glory, Is enough! All that is darkest in me rises to the surface Of my soul, That which is dross, impure Is borne up on the tide of my lanced love My Lord, my Jesus, for you take me whole To make the hopeless holy. You have harpooned your struggling fish, O Man-God, Master of Seas! It is your net I fear far more than your will's sword, Unvanquished Jesus! It is your net - the stifling shock of shoals hauled asunder, Outpoured as silver at your wounded feet; The terror and glory Is my drop lost already in your ocean. ......................................................................................... JESU, WE LIFT OUR LIGHT TO THEE The child whose eyes are full of stars That burn the hills of broken cars, The man whose smile is like the sun, whose only wealth is everyone - Jesu, we lift our light to Thee To glorify their poverty. The girl as simple as the moon robbed of her innocence too soon; The mothers who are left to pray For sons and husbands locked away - Jesu, we lift our light to Thee To shine in their captivity. The bones upon the searing plain Too weak to reach for milk or grain; The hands that cry from fields of blood Dying in debris, war, and mud - Jesu, we lift our light to Thee To guide us to Eternity. ......................................................................................... PRAYER Give me my share of the power of the mountains And my part of the trees’ prayer. Give me the wind to quicken my feet And the birds to sing to. Let me remember roses And that rainbows begin in cloud, That the sky has wept oftener than I, And that tears may sleep in the quiet kiss of the grass. Give me the love of man, And fill it with light So that my heart is not weighed down with wings, But make it the gay feather on which I fly. ......................................................................................... PSALM Dear God, I touch the hem of your listening darkness with my heart; And my lips are filled with light. Clambering on the vanishing treads of prayer, Each thought's finger strains in outreach unto you; And it is wholly there, Mind close in for the strong force To fuse Mind Holy with lowlier mind; As a fine bead breaks of dew, runs at a water's touch, is lost in the pool. As a passion of wind and wave claps cloud and the soaring sea together Rapt in the silent eye of the vortex. O God, I am a moving stillness within you: But touch my need with the finest filament of your Will, Time is re-woven. ......................................................................................... THE COMING When you first came - your clarion sounded by a thousand fables - Nobody noticed you, hid in your own shadow, Nobody saw the Man behind the winding-sheet Who opened his arms wide and called to the children; Who opened his arms wide with a lovely smile And touched the amazing glass for all to see In the bending light your face...bare Love breaks through a fissure of time In which the heart, the Earth, and the Sun, stop. And the second time, You blew like pollen through a thousand hearts Lighting the grains of love into a flare; Striking like a match dry nerves, and in a running flame Catching the hands of the unprepared, of the unwary, Catching the hands of the dancers in delight And running with their messages of love All over the Universe. We are astonishment, we whose wide eyes were burnt open; Bursting like stars on the firmament of fear. The third Coming comes in a blue silence. Those Who have understood, bowing their melting eyes To the Infinite as the liquid Love of the Will of the Father Floods and flows over the last banks of our history, Floods and flows white as our burning blood, Yielding with utmost grace each heart to the Inconceivable As gaunt brothers tower in fear over a brief terrain And are taken, all, with the body of the world. And are faced, all, by the eyes of Christ in the blue silence ......................................................................................... THE PILGRIM KING Christ is your Creed, your high endeavour; He that is Love let none deny. You are the loved, without Him never - In shadow and sunlight standing by. Christ is your Truth, your God, your Saviour; Ye are no wiser than His Word. Dutiful be in all behaviour Unto that Song the soul has heard. No-one is lost; His dearest pleasure Is ever to be our homeward Guide, Gathering slowly all his treasure Of human hearts to the Angels’ side. Lord of our Joy, no tongue can praise you More than the Christed soul can sing! Beacon of Love in Heaven ablaze, You Reign in our hearts as the Pilgrim King. ......................................................................................... TRAWL Help me - oh help me endure. A touch from your finger-tip, fierce glory, is enough! All that is darkest in me rises to the surface of my soul, That which is dross, impure Is borne up on the tide of my lanced love My Lord, my Jesus, for you take me whole To make the hopeless holy. You have harpooned your struggling fish, O Man-God, Master of Seas! It is your net I fear far more than your will's sword Unvanquished Jesus! It is your net - the stifling shock of shoals hauled asunder, Outpoured as silver at your wounded feet; The terror and glory Is my drop lost already in your ocean. ......................................................................................... WALKING ON THE WATERS You walk among us, and we become Incandescent. Who are You? You are the Light of the world, our life's flame Opening bone and nail to reality. Our liquid lives run away from the last cry Cross-hatched with pain, melting into Your feet To bear You mutely as the waters bore You - All we can do, to make this Death complete Is haul our Tree down to the rising tide, The debris-ridden sea we call a soul. Back in the lovely desert of our lies The weight of it seared us, old and black as coal. Nothing behind us but the wastes of time, Nothing before us but the Saviour's face, Like mad men we float out on the Cross To enter You. In the dirtiest, holiest place. ......................................................................................... THE VIRGIN WINDOW A little child I do not know With a stone broke my window. The beautiful glass, all shattered and smashed Lay on the floor where it had crashed, Its jewelled colours alive no more - In fragments dead upon the floor. Mother Mary's gentle face Was cracked and holed in many a place. Her soft-draped cloak of heavenly blue That glowed like love when the sun shone through Was torn from the limbs of the Virgin Queen And there was a hole where her heart had been. The cruel stone lay there below. I picked it up and with sorrow Bluring my sight with tears unshed, My mind numbed and my heart like lead, Wearily over the glass I stepped, Sat down on a chair, and wept. (Written when I was thirteen.) ......................................................................................... NURSERY RHYME Jesus Christ is ours today, His Sun will shine on straight and gay! Leave the trivial, leave the smart And come to the Lover that’s in your heart. Come with a whoop or come with the gall, Come if you’re ill or you’re not at all. Up the ladder where angels fall - A Cup and Loaf will serve us all! ......................................................................................... |