Issue Date: April 18, 2003
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Tulipmania at Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs, Ark.
-- NCR photo/Toni-Ann Ortiz |
Cristo Vive
I joined the procession of singing and
waving palms, equatorial sun imprinting beneath my skin the words: Cristo
vive, Cristo vive, Cristo vive en me. I saw him broken and shared at
El Centro,
where families of small shoeshine boys are fed and
educated. I found him at mingas, where neighbors help one another
build a house or harvest crops, I watched him dancing until morning in
fiesta.
He was everywhere, poured and parceled out like the little
piles of dried maize and peas sold along the streets by Quechuan
women. Such wanton bread, nuestro pan quotidian. In Quito and here
in us, Cristo vive!
-- Mary OHerron Buffalo,
N.Y.
Lent and War: A Paradox
The shade of ashes crosses our brows.
We
silence the gloria, We bury the alleluia, We cover up in purple As we
encounter this solemn season Of prayer, fasting, alms to others. But
thundering in this season of silence We hear the crash of night stretching
bombs That beat their war drums With cacophony cadences Splatter,
break, explode Midst our purple shrouded silence. We squint our
eyes As we try to pierce this mystery, This paradox of Lent and
War? Prayer with bullets, Sacrifice with lives, Alms of oil for
food, With the thunder, lightning clap Of destruction as Evil Paints
his portrait in The fuming smoke That spoils the Night eyes of the
sky.
And so we crunch our ashed brows in perplexity And ask,
Why, now, God? Why, now, God as we with caution
climb Up that calvary hill As we watch for each booby trap of
War Strewn at our feet on our way.
What mercy, mercy, Lord have mercy
of Lent Can sooth the pain of confusion Of Lent and War?
This
echoes our Job question As we plead some answer On bended, crippled
knees Midst all this misery. Where are you I am, Who
Am? And so we hear: There I am, on bended, broken
knees with you.
-- Fr. William A. Beaver, OSB Jeannette,
Pa. Church of Loretto
They have retired early --
tongues of
aging nuns, prayers asleep in their mouths. There is no singing
now. The convent church is locked. It is snowing. Inside, votive lights
plead with stained glass. The church window illumines worlds of
the Summa in lead: Aquinas, the one who answered all
questions.
When I was a child, I would flee the unhappiness of my
parents and run to open churches til morning. I would search the eyes of
plaster saints for something human we all had lost. Now, I clutch this
moon like a rosary with arthritic fingers. I am a cawing bone, an animal
curled in on itself in winter, too close to myself to scrape night off
my paws.
I dreamed Iraqi children fell from roofs, hit the ground
running with broken limbs -- a fresco of fathers chasing them with
hammers. Again tonight I cannot sleep. At this place, I hoped to pocket
lingering lullabies, smell the succor of compline warmed in wooden
pews, taste spoonfuls of this spoken food, borrow their faith for the
night.
Like a mendicant, I stand begging. Nothing answers
back. Then in the convent window, three women haloed with
candles, huddle and point at the snow. I chase my breath and open my
palms: These are the alms I receive -- this knot of nuns, this sleepy
silhouette of light.
-- Jacqueline Dickey South Bend,
Ind.
Elegy for the Living
In war, the first casualty is
truth. -- Roman saying
A menacing specter scrapes the
air like a moms insistent pleas to her drowning son. The bastard
god of war, coddled and eager waits to incinerate the dew of our fresh
century.
Now, must shock and awe refer not to the rare
mystics apprehension, but standing plans to rain 3,000 cruise
missiles on Baghdad one weekend?
Whod dare seek the
ignominious capitulation of civilizations cradle: survivors
destined to crawl along disemboweled streets where cries of water,
water fall still and unrequited, her staunchest defenders
reduced to soiled and stupid psychosis?
Must not those who
plot such deeds one day come to envy their victims?
-- Jay Allain Hyannis, Mass.
Rahabs House
A crimson thread
hangs in the
window of the womans house who took the risk and protected the
strangers.
Now, one tiny thread protects her household, the thread
of trust that strangers are trustworthy, that enemies are
friends.
Some say she is no better than she ought to be. But she
is better than most, and I want to live in a house like
hers.
-- Bonnie Thurston Wheeling,
W.Va.
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-- Lori L. Brown |
The Lean Hours
Ice fishermen cling to winter
sinking
their lines into darkness while spring rain bends the stalks
of some
that would be tall-- corn and irises and blades of grass. I remember the
Idaho children
who ate water lilies and drank from their shallow pond
last year in order to remain as one. Today
willow limbs whisper pale
yellow. Stooping to gather the remains of the season I consider the risk
and the return of tulips.
My knee grows moist from the earth. My
hands form themselves into questions as old as the flags draped in
windows
as vacant as the notion of victory. Surely these are the lean
hours when the sea and sky hone gray to stone
and wind draws silent
whitecaps altering the monotone just enough for hope that some glory
might arouse the sun.
-- Jean Colgan Gould Natick,
Mass.
Resurrection
The sunflower seed
Draws to
itself Matter and water -- Food blessed by God.
A single tender
shoot Breaks through earth And in time grows tall and sturdy
-- Full face toward heaven As it satisfies its Short season on
earth.
In due time The flower bows its head and dies Spilling
its fruit upon earth So that others might eat
and live.
-- Monica L. Zabor Arlington Heights,
Ill.
Like a Tree
May I make of my life a prayer,
wearing
my years like a tree; its flocks of leaves singing their tender
vibratos, its gaunt limbs pouring blue rivers of shadow over snow. May
I honor the wounds inscribed on my body. During times of drought may I
plumb the holy water of rain In my heart.
-- Marguerite Bouvard Wellesley, Mass.
Mary Magdalene the Apostle
(Go to my brothers and tell them.
John 20:17)
Not promising,
not a good
beginning, to send Mary with the news before the day is
bright.
Had the hand he laid on her killed the whiff of seven
demons he had exorcised?
Anyway, by law not to be trusted. As
witness, very dubious.
Why had he appeared first of all to
her? Why make trouble now? Not street smart.
She walks the garden
path before the morning light, the fortress of Antonia
still threatening the small of the night,
sees angels in
white guarding an empty tomb, turns to find the gardener (fretting
over trampled cabbages?)
who is dumb before her question, but speaks
her name, and in the speaking, suddenly it is dawn.
She reaches
out a hand to touch the yesterday, grasps the feet of all the
untouchable tomorrows.
She who loiters finds, is sent to tell the
others before the history is cooked, served on silver
platters.
But the huddled guardians of despair will not eat. The
unprocessed tale smacks of bleeding grief.
-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell, OSB Collegeville,
Minn.
teach in
I think they were dominican sisters
there
among the chaldeans in basrah seventy-five miles from the gulf on the
shatt-al-arab and how once on the street a stranger came to them and
whispered your archbishop kassab I think he is a good muslim
I do
not know anything about these people this is what I tell myself staring
into the bathroom mirror talking to an old american face my eyes scored
four time over
and that synagogue in baghdad how long has it been
there I want to know this for myself how long from the waters of
babylon and what of the four presbyterian churches
this is what my
face says to me this is the business of my face it says how well does the
bishop know you
-- John Knoeplfe
Springfield,
Ill. |
National Catholic Reporter, April
18, 2003 |