FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

A Sabbath Poem (Bass)

PRAY FOR PEACE
~ by Ellen Bass

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
Drop some silver and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray.
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile cases we are poured into.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas--

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Scoop your holy water
from the gutter. Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

(from Human Line)

A Sabbath Poem (Tagore - 2)

YOUR NAME
~ Rabindranath Tagore

I will utter Your Name, sitting alone
among the shadows of my silent thoughts.
I will utter it without words;
I will utter it without purpose.
For I am like a child that calls its mother
a hundred times, glad that it can say, "Mother."

(from The Heart of God, Prayers of Rabindranath Tagore,
selected and edited by Herbert F. Vetter, Tuttle Press, 1997)

A Sabbath Poem (Alexie)

DANGEROUS ASTRONOMY
~ by Sherman Alexie

I wanted to walk outside and praise the stars,
But David, my baby son, coughed and coughed.
His comfort was more important than the stars

So I comforted and kissed him in his dark
Bedroom, but my comfort was not enough.
His mother was more important than the stars

So he cried for her breast and milk. It's hard
For fathers to compete with mothers' love.
In the dark, mothers illuminate like the stars!

Dull and jealous, I was the smallest part
Of the whole. I know this is stupid stuff
But I felt less important than the farthest star

As my wife fed my son in the hungry dark.
How can a father resent his son and his son's love?
Was my comfort more important than the stars?

A selfish father, I wanted to pull apart
My comfortable wife and son. Forgive me, Rough
God, because I walked outside and praised the stars,
And thought I was more important than the stars.

(from Dangerous Astronomy, Limberlost Press, 2005)

A Sabbath Poem (Arnold)

A WISH
~ by Matthew Arnold

I ask not that my bed of death
From bands of greedy heirs be free;
For these besiege the latest breath
Of fortune's favoured sons, not me.

I ask not each kind soul to keep
Tearless, when of my death he hears;
Let those who will, if any, weep!
There are worse plagues on earth than tears.

I ask but that my death may find
The freedom to my life denied;
Ask but the folly of mankind,
Then, at last, to quit my side.

Spare me the whispering, crowded room,
The friends who come, and gape, and go;
The ceremonious air of gloom -
All which makes death a hideous show!

Nor bring, to see me cease to live,
Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head and give
The ill he cannot cure a name.

Nor fetch, to take the accustomed toll
Of the poor sinner bound for death,
His brother doctor of the soul,
To canvass with official breath

The future and its viewless things -
That undiscovered mystery
Which one who feels death's winnowing wings
Must need read clearer, sure, than he!

Bring none of these; but let me be,
While all around in silence lies,
Moved to the window near, and see
Once more before my dying eyes

Bathed in the sacred dew of morn
The wide aerial landscape spread -
The world which was ere I was born,
The world which lasts when I am dead.

Which never was the friend of one,
Nor promised love it could not give,
But lit for all its generous sun,
And lived itself, and made us live.

There let me gaze, till I become
In soul with what I gaze on wed!
To feel the universe my home;
To have before my mind -instead

Of the sick-room, the mortal strife,
The turmoil for a little breath -
The pure eternal course of life,
Not human combatings with death.

Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow
Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear;
Then willing let my spirit go
To work or wait elsewhere or here!

Sabbath Poem (Hafiz - 5)

POSITIONS OF LOVE
~ by Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz (c. 1320-1389)

There are so many positions of love:
each curve on a
branch,

the thousand ways your eyes can hold us,
the infinite shapes each mind
can draw,

the spring orchestra of scents and sounds wafting through the air,
the currents of light combusting like
passionate lips,

the revolution of the universe’s skirt, whose folds
contain other worlds,

our every sigh that falls against
His inconceivably close,
omnipresent,
divine
body.

A Sabbath Poem (Cohen)

BY THE RIVERS DARK
~ by Leonard Cohen
      
By the rivers dark
I wandered on.
I lived my life
In Babylon.

And I did forget
My holy song:
And I had no strength
In Babylon.

By the rivers dark
Where I could not see
Who was waiting there
Who was hunting me.

And he cut my lip
And he cut my heart.
So I could not drink
From the river dark.

And he covered me,
And I saw within,
My lawless heart
And my wedding ring,

I did not know
And I could not see
Who was waiting there,
Who was hunting me.

By the rivers dark
I panicked on.
I belonged at last
To Babylon.

Then he struck my heart
With a deadly force,
And he said, 'this heart:
It is not yours.’

And he gave the wind
My wedding ring;
And he circled us
With everything.

By the rivers dark,
In a wounded dawn,
I live my life
In Babylon.

Though I take my song
From a withered limb,
Both song and tree,
They sing for him.

Be the truth unsaid
And the blessing gone,
If I forget
My Babylon.

I did not know
And I could not see
Who was waiting there,
Who was hunting me.

By the rivers dark,
Where it all goes on;
By the rivers dark
In Babylon.

(from album Ten New Songs, 2001)

A Sabbath Poem (Orr)

THIS IS WHAT WAS BEQUEATHED US
~ by Gregory Orr 

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved's clear instructions:

Turn me into song; sing me awake.

(from How Beautiful the Beloved, Copper Canyon Press, 2009)

A Sabbath Poem (Service)

A GRAIN OF SAND
~ by Robert W. Service
 
If starry space no limit knows
And sun succeeds to sun,
There is no reason to suppose
Our earth the only one.
'Mid countless constellations cast
A million worlds may be,
With each a God to bless or blast
And steer to destiny.

Just think! A million gods or so
To guide each vital stream,
With over all to boss the show
A Deity supreme.
Such magnitudes oppress my mind;
From cosmic space it swings;
So ultimately glad to find
Relief in little things.

For look! Within my hollow hand,
While round the earth careens,
I hold a single grain of sand
And wonder what it means.
Ah! If I had the eyes to see,
And brain to understand,
I think Life's mystery might be
Solved in this grain of sand.

A Sabbath Poem (Schneider)

THE PATIENCE OF ORDINARY THINGS
~ by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

(from Another River: New and Selected Poems)

A Sabbath Poem (Rumi - 5)

LOVE STORY
~ by Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

(translated by Coleman Barks)

A Sabbath Poem (Rilke - 5)

TRANSITION
~ by Rainer Maria Rilke

You are not surprised at the force of the storm
—you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit;
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

A Sabbath Poem (Herbert)

MATTINS
~ by George Herbert
 
I cannot ope mine eyes,
But thou art ready there to catch
My morning-soul and sacrifice:
Then we must needs for that day make a match.

My God, what is a heart?
Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
Or star, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things or all of them in one?

My God, what is a heart?
That thou should'st it so eye, and woo,
Pouring upon it all thy art,
As if that thou hadst nothing else to do?

Indeed man's whole estate
Amounts (and richly) to serve thee:
He did not heav'n and earth create,
Yet studies them, not him by whom they be.

Teach me thy love to know;
That this new light, which now I see,
May both the work and workman show:
Then by a sun-beam I will climb to thee.

A Sabbath Poem (Stern)

CHARCOAL
~ by Sarah Stern

Find a place where your line
wants to take a journey,

where the leaf pushes
up against the window,

some curve in any direction
in the moment after sex

before the air around you settles
and the language names,

a place where skin meets light,
meets shadow, mother's mouth,

young, in the camera
as if she knew what you would become.

Let your hand tell you--
begin there, on the boat,

the woman leaning over the deck,
looking.

(from This Full Green Hour, Sonopo Press, 2008)

Thank you Alvin Poblacion for introducing us
to Sarah Stern and this anthology.

A Sabbath Poem (Bishop)

ONE ART
~ by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

(from The Poetry of Our World, ed. Jeffery Paine, Perennial, 2000)

A Sabbath Poem (Baal Shem Tov)

ONCE A PERSON KNOWS
~ by Baal Shem Tov

It is therefore written: "Hide, I will hide my face."
That is, God will be hidden
so that they do not even know God is there.
But once a person knows God is hidden,
God is not really hidden.

(from The Path of Blessing, by Rabbi Marcia Prager, Jewish Lights, 2003)

A Sabbath Poem (Alexander)

ARE WE NOT OF INTEREST TO EACH OTHER?
~ by Elizabeth Alexander (2009 presidential inauguration laureate)

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said

"Every 'I' is a dramatic 'I'")
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I'm sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

(from Ars Poetica #100: I Believe)

A Sabbath Poem (Goethe)

CONTEMPLATING DESIRE
~ by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning

now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward...

(from Wicker Park Grace church newsletter, www.wickerparkgrace.net)

A Sabbath Poem (Chapman)

IF NOT NOW
~ by Tracy Chapman

If not now then when
If not today then
Why make your promises
A love declared for days to come
Is as good as none

You can wait 'til morning comes
You can wait for the new day
You can wait and lose this heart
You can wait and soon be sorry

Now love's the only thing that's free
We must take it where it's found
Pretty soon it may be costly

If not now what then
We all must live our lives
Always feeling
Always thinking
The moment has arrived

(lyrics from a song with the same title, first album of Tracy Chapman)

A Sabbath Poem (Jones)

AFTER WORK
~ by Richard Jones

Coming up from the subway
into the cool Manhattan evening,
I feel rough hands on my heart--
women in the market yelling
over rows of tomatoes and peppers,
old men sitting on a stoop playing cards,
cabbies cursing each other with fists
while the music of church bells
sails over the street,
and the father, angry and tired
after working all day,
embracing his little girls,
kissing her,
mi vida, mi corazon,
brushing the hair out of her eyes
so she can see.

(from Good Poems: Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor,
Penguin Books, 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (Dickinson)

POEM 1129
~ by Emily Dickinson

Tell all the Truth but tell is slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind--

(from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)

The Future of Our Beginning

~ by Samir Selmanovic

We started with much dreaming, many, many conversations, and meticulous planning. No house, however, can be built on blueprints alone. We are in the middle of hands-on work; brick by brick, one week at a time, one caring act at a time, one friendship at a time. The integral part of our house construction project is securing financial resources. To learn about our House Warming Campaign and to show us some love click HERE.

In the midst of this work, however, the vision must never slip away from our hearts or fade from our horizon. I write poems to help me personally stay the course. I hope you enjoy this one.

THE FUTURE OF OUR BEGINNING

I came from the same womb you came from.
Hope, like fluid, was shared and not my own.
Same food, same air, same love, same
warm caress of the future unknown.

I came from the same womb you came from.
With our birth, greed was born, and then blood drawn.
God's water broke and I slid out with you
from a nucleus of love into a nuclear dawn.

Now our hands and legs are intertwined again.
If you push there, something here will have to give--
whatever you do now matters again--
if you bless there, something here will live.

Please search your story and find me there.
Doubt, break the rules, touch the source,
touch the bottom of your well and rediscover
God who does not favor you and yours.

I came from the same womb you came from.
And now I stand on my, and you stand on your tower.
Let us walk down,
to the beginning, when it was Us and Our.

Thank you for reading, loving, dreaming, supporting!

A Sabbath Poem (Wiederkehr)

THE SACRAMENT OF WAITING
~ Macrina Wiederkehr

Slowly
she celebrated the sacrament of letting go.
First she surrendered her green,
then the orange, yellow, and red
finally she let go of her brown.
Shedding her last leaf
she stood empty and silent, stripped bare.
Leaning against the winter sky
she began her vigil of trust.

Shedding her last leaf
she watched its journey to the ground.
She stood in silence
wearing the color of emptiness,
her branches wondering;
How do you give shade with so much gone?

And then,
the sacrament of waiting began.
The sunrise and sunset watched with tenderness.
Clothing her with silhouettes
they kept her hope alive.

They helped her understand that
her vulnerability,
her dependence and need,
her emptiness,
her readiness to receive
were giving her a new kind of beauty.
Every morning and every evening they stood in silence
and celebrated together
the sacrament of waiting.

(source: www.inwardoutward.org)

A Sabbath Poem (Oliver - 2)

THE FIST
~ by Mary Oliver  

There are days 
when the sun goes down 
like a fist, 
though of course 

if you see anything 
in the heavens 
in this way
you had better get 

your eyes checked 
or, better still, 
your diminished spirit. 
The heavens 

have no fist, 
or wouldn’t they have been 
shaking it 
for a thousand years now, 

and even 
longer than that, 
at the dull, brutish 
ways of mankind— 

heaven’s own 
creation? 
Instead: such patience! 
Such willingness 

to let us continue! 
To hear, 
little by little, 
the voices— 

only, so far, in 
pockets of the world— 
suggesting 
the possibilities 

of peace? 
Keep looking. 
Behold, how the fist opens 
with invitation.

(from Thirst, Beacon Press, 2006)

A Sabbath Poem (Wolcott)

LOVE AFTER LOVE
~ by Derek Wolcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

(from Collected Poems, 1930-1973, New York: Norton, 1974)

A Sabbath Poem (Snodgrass)

UP ON THE ROOF
~ by Bowie Snodgrass

We are cultivating Morning Glories on a rooftop in Harlem,
Giant White, Heavenly Blue, and Majestic Purple.

We have flowers and herbs and wandering weeds
And compost and goldfish in our garden.

In the cool September sun I sit still
And let my thoughts drift to You.

A Sabbath Poem (Berry - 4)

LET ME RISE
~ by Wendell Berry

When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.

(from Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer, Collected Poems)

A Sabbath Poem (Tolkien)

MAXIM
~ by J.R.R. Tolkien

All that is gold does not glitter;
Not all who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither;
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be kindled;
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken;
The crownless again shall be king.

(from The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien)

A Sabbath Poem (Rilke - 4)

FEAR NOT THE STRANGENESS
~ by Rainer Maria Rilke

You must give birth to you images.
They are the future to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you
                    long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.

(Letters to a Young Poet, Transl. Stephen Mitchell, 
New York: Vintage Books, 1986)

A Sabbath Poem (Oliver - 2)

WILD GEESE
~ by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
    love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

(Mary Oliver, from Dream Work)

A Sabbath Poem (Rumi - 4)

DIE BEFORE YOU DIE
~ by Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)

Really to experience the day of Resurrection
You have to die first, for "resurrection" means
"Making the dead come back to life."
The whole world is racing in the wrong direction
For everyone is terrified of non-existence.
That is, in reality, the only certain refuge.
How should we try to win real awareness?
By renouncing all knowing.
How should we look for salvation?
By giving up our personal salvation.
How should we search for real existence?
By giving up our existence.
How should we search for the fruit of the spirit?
By not always greedily stretching out our hands.

(Light Upon Light: Inspirations from Rumi, transl. Andrew Harvey)

A Sabbath Poem (Tao-Sheng)

WE ARE CLAY
~ by Kuan Tao-Sheng

Take a lump of clay,
Wet it, pat it,
Make a statue of you
And a statue of me
Then shatter them, clatter them,
Add some water,
And break them and mold them
Into a statue of you
And a statue of me.
Then in mine, there are bits of you
And in you there are bits of me.
Nothing ever shall keep us apart.

(quoted in Of Love and Lust by Theodor Reik)

A Sabbath Poem (Tennyson)

MUCH ABIDES
~ by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tho' much is taken, much abides,
and though
we are not that strength
which in old days
moved earth and heaven, that
which we are, we are.
One equal temper of heroic beauty
made weak by time and fate, but
strong in will
to strive, to seek, to find, and not
to yield.

(from: Ulysses)

A Sabbath Poem (Milosz)

INCANTATION
~ by Czeslaw Milosz

Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
It is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope.
It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master,
Giving us the estate of the world to manage.
It saves austere and transparent phrases
From the filthy discord of tortured words.
It says that everything is new under the sun,
Opens the congealed fist of the past.
Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia
And poetry, her ally in service of the good.
As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth,
The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo,
Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit,
Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.

(translated by Robert Pinsky and the author, from
The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life,
by Austin Dacey, 2008, Prometheus Books)

A Sabbath Poem (Stafford - 2)

IT'S HEAVY TO DRAG
~ by William Stafford

It's heavy to drag, this big sack of what
you should have done. And finally
you can't lift it any more.
Someone says, "Come on," and you
just look at them. Trees are waiting,
mountains. You never intended
that it should come to this.

But Now has arrived and is looking
straight at you, the way a lion does
when thinking it over, and anything
can happen. It's time for the cavalry
or maybe the Lone Ranger. But they
won't come. Maybe the music will
spill over and start it all again.
Maybe.

(from The Way It Is, New & Selected Poems, Graywolf Press, 1999)

A Sabbath Poem (Hafiz - 4)

AT THIS PARTY
~ by Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz (c. 1320-1389)

I don't want to be the only one here
Telling all the secrets--

Filling up all the bowls at this party,
Taking all the laughs.

I would like you
To start putting things on the table
That can also feed the soul
The way I do.

That way
We can invite

A hell of a lot more
Friends.

(from The Subject Tonight Is Love: Sixty Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz,
versions by Daniel Ladinsky, Pumpkin House Press, 3rd ed, 2000)

Thank you our friend Daniel Ladinsky for sending us this book! A sweet gift.

A Sabbath Poem (St. Catherine - 2)

THE MIND'S RUIN
~ by St. Catherine of Siena

I first saw God when I was a child, six years of age.
The cheeks of the sun were pale before Him,
and the earth acted as a shy
girl, like me.

Divine light entered my heart from His love
that did never fully wane,

though indeed, dear, I can understand how a person's
faith can at times flicker,

for what is the mind to do
with something that becomes the mind's ruin:
a God that consumes us
in His grace.

I have seen what you want;
it is there,

 a Beloved of infinite
tenderness.

A Sabbath Poem (Rabia - 2)

WHERE I KNEEL
~ by Rabia of Basra

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church
where I kneel.

Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.

Is there not a region of love where the sovereignty is
illumined nothing,

where ecstasy gets poured into itself
and becomes
lost,

where the wing is fully alive
but has no mind or
body?

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque,
a church

that dissolve, that
dissolve in
God.

(Thank you Lorelei Cress for sending us this poem!)

A Sabbath Poem (Eckhart - 2)

WORLDS ARE FORMING
~ by Meister Eckhart

All beings
are words of God,
His music, His
art.

Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps
in our
souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart.

A Sabbath Poem (Polacco)

THE TASTE OF WARM BREAD
~ by Stacey Polacco (New York City)

A child stands outside
The bakery window staring at the
Freshly baked bread,
the scent of hot dough rises up into her imagination and
she can taste the softness between her lips,
the hard chewy crust delicious on her tongue
she continues to stare and sees pure perfection
As if nothing in the world ever looked so good
So desirable, though she’s not unfamiliar with
Being hungry and staring at what she can’t have
Which at first – makes her wonder why…?
Why she can’t havea piece of what she desperately hungers for
Why so many others can
But then understands somehow that starving and staring
Is exactly where she’s supposed to be
As if the bakery was created to reveal her hunger
And there is a delight in that, as there is a delight in the dough
And she breathes in what she knows she can’t have
filled with a sense she somehow created it.

(Thank you Stacey for this gift!)

A Sabbath Poem (Oliver)

 

PRAYING
~ by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

(from Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, 2006)
Thank you Rabbi David Ingber for sending us this book!

A Sabbath Poem (Frost)

A TIME TO TALK
~ by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, "What is it?"
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

(from You Come Too, by Robert Frost, Owlet, 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (Bozarth)

THE SMALL PLOT OF GROUND
~ by Alla Renee Bozarth

The small plot of ground
on which you were born
cannot be expected

to stay forever
the same.
Earth changes,
and home becomes different
places.

You took flesh
from clay
but the clay
did not come
from just one place.

To feel alive,
important, and safe,
know your own waters
and hills, but know
more

You have stars in your bones
and oceans
in blood.

You have opposing
terrain in each eye
you belong to the land
and sky of your first cry,
you belong to infinity.

(from Earth Prayers, edited by Elizabeth Roberts)
Thank you Bowie for sending this to us!

A Sabbath Poem (Whitman)

TO BE A GREAT POEM
~ a reflection by Walt Whitman
(from preface to Leaves of Grass)

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul--and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

A Sabbath Poem (St. John of the Cross - 2)

IF YOU LOVE
~ by St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)
You might quiet the whole world for a second

if you pray.
And if you love, if you

really love,
our guns will

wilt.



(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (Rabia)

I HOPE GOD THINKS LIKE THAT
~ Rabia of Basra (c. 717-801)

There is a dog I sometimes take for a walk
and turn loose in a
field,

when I can’t give her that freedom
I feel in debt.

I hope God thinks like that and

is keeping track of all
the bliss He
owes
me.

Born nearly five hundred years before Rumi, Rabia was a central female Islamic figure of Sufi tradition. As a young woman, while wandering homeless, she was abducted, sold into slavery and spend decades working in a brothel, exposed to both physical and sexual abuse. Later in life, she became one of the greatest women saints and poets known to history. She once said, "What a place for trials and transformation did my lover put me, but never once did He look upon me as if I were impure." Rabia is a timely spiritual voice for women of this century, especially for any woman (or man) who had had to suffer the emotionally crippling degradation of unwanted touch. After she was given freedom, she helped people heal and was offered a bag of gold for her work, to which she responded, "Dear, if you leave that, flies with gather as if a horse just relieved himself, and I might slip in it while dancing."

(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (St. Teresa)

THE SKY’S SHEETS
~ St. Teresa of Avila

When God touches me I clutch the sky’s
sheets,
the way other
lovers
do
the earth’s weave
of clay.
Any real ecstasy is a sign
you are moving
in the right
direction,
don’t let any prude tell
you otherwise.


(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (Amichai)

THE PLACE WHERE WE ARE RIGHT
~ by Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.

And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

(You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right,
by Brad Hirschfield, Harmony Books, 2007)

A Sabbath Poem (Piercy)

TO BE OF USE
~ by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

(from Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor)

A Sabbath Poem (Ibn 'Arabi)

FIRE
~ by Muhammad
Ibn 'Arabi (Sufi Poet)

O Marvel! A garden amidst the flames of Love.
My heart has become capable of every form:
it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,
a temple for the Hindu God's and the pilgrim's Ka'bah,
the tablets of the Torah and the book of the Qur'an.
I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love's camel takes me,
that is my religion and my faith.
(Thank you Rabia Gentile for sending us this poem!)

A Sabbath Poem (Rumi - 4))

PRAYER IS AN EGG
~ by Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)

Don't do daily prayers like a bird
pecking, moving its head
up and down. Prayer is an egg.

Hatch out the total helplessness inside.

(translated by Coleman Barks)