HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

for better or for worse...

"God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my path violently and recklessly,
all things which alter my plans and intentions, and change the course of my life,
for better or for worse."

Carl Gustav Jung

And wait for me at the end of these my twisting paths, for it is Thee that I love and none other.

At the End of These My Twisting Paths

Lord, thou knowest this heart of mine.
Thou knowest the clashings that at sundry hours rage therein.
Thou knowest my contradictions,
pulled this way and that, I am torn within my breast.
Thou knowest the things that give me life
and the things that wound me unto death,
all that is my joy and all that that is my sorrow Thou knowest,
the strength that is mine,
and the weariness that on certain days is more than I can bear.

Lord, thou knowest my life.
Thou knowest its heights and its depths,
the welling up of loves and the loathings that follow,
fidelity and infidelity,
seasons of flourishing and seasons of crisis,
my brightnesses and my darker moments.

All this, O Lord,
and all that is this life of mine Thou knowest,
thou who searchest the heart and its secret places.

But above all this,
Thou art the Son of Man who one day didst take Thy rest beside the well,
weak Thou wast, and worn, and thirsty,
in the garden held fast in the grip of fear,
and on the tree forsaken.

Come thou, my peace.
Come thou, my sweetness.
Come thou, my consolation.
Come thou my pardon and my love.

Come, rebuild the brokenness within.
Come, redress my fragile shelter.
Come, restore my hope.
Be thou to me one little flame in so vast a night.
And wait for me at the end of these my twisting paths,
for it is Thee that I love and none other.

h/t
From Father Mark at  Vultus Christi

"Didyme wrote this prayer. I took the liberty of translating it from the French. It is every sinner's psalm. The last two lines are extraordinary."

*Didyme/ a Postulant Prémontré in Belgium/his blog (All In French): "La beauté du Seigneur"

,

Read from some humbler poet...who still heard in his soul the music of wonderful melodies

photo:mine

The Day is Done

 
THE DAY is done, and the darkness     
  Falls from the wings of Night,     
As a feather is wafted downward     
  From an eagle in his flight.     
 
I see the lights of the village            
  Gleam through the rain and the mist,     
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me     
  That my soul cannot resist:     
 
A feeling of sadness and longing,     
  That is not akin to pain,     
And resembles sorrow only     
  As the mist resembles the rain.     
 
Come, read to me some poem,     
  Some simple and heartfelt lay,     
That shall soothe this restless feeling,     
  And banish the thoughts of day.     
 
Not from the grand old masters,     
  Not from the bards sublime,     
Whose distant footsteps echo     
  Through the corridors of Time.     
 
For, like strains of martial music,     
  Their mighty thoughts suggest     
Life's endless toil and endeavor;     
  And to-night I long for rest.     
 
Read from some humbler poet,     
  Whose songs gushed from his heart,     
As showers from the clouds of summer,     
  Or tears from the eyelids start;     
 
Who, through long days of labor,     
  And nights devoid of ease,     
Still heard in his soul the music     
  Of wonderful melodies.     
 
Such songs have power to quiet     
  The restless pulse of care,     
And come like the benediction     
  That follows after prayer.     
 
Then read from the treasured volume     
  The poem of thy choice,     
And lend to the rhyme of the poet     
  The beauty of thy voice.     
 
And the night shall be filled with music,     
  And the cares, that infest the day,     
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,     
  And as silently steal away.



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Window to My Soul

photo: mine

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.....

 

In the bleak midwinter,
frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

photo:my own

The Ground Has On It's Clothes....

Snow

Snow,

blessed snow,

comes out of the sky

like bleached flies.

The ground is no longer naked.

The ground has on its clothes.

The trees poke out of sheets

and each branch wears the sock of God.

There is hope.

There is hope everywhere.

I bite it.

Someone once said:

Don't bite till you know

if it's bread or stone.

What I bite is all bread,

rising, yeasty as a cloud.

There is hope.

There is hope everywhere.

Today God gives milk

and I have the pail.

"Snow" by Anne Sexton, from The Awful Rowing Toward God.

This is gonna bring me to my knees....

This is gonna bring me to my knees, I just wanna hold you close to me, originally uploaded by Lacking
Focus.

Lament (Whom will you cry to, heart?)

Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.

Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry
of jubilation, unripe.
But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of joy.
Loveliest in my invisible
landscape, you that made me more known
to the invisible angels.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Lifted Veil

 

photo:the lifted veil



from "The Temple Transparent" in The Fragrance of God

by Vigen Guroian

    Behold, I will send my messenger,
and he shall prepare the way before me;
and the Lord, whom ye seek,
shall suddenly come to his temple.
    Malachi 3:1, KJV

"This autumn, after an awful summer drought, the trees blazed in lustrous shades of red and orange, but the flames on their branched candelabras were short lived.
Heavy rains snuffed them out, and cold winds sent the leaves in trembling flocks to an early earthen rest. It brought to mind some lines from Robert Frost:

"The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove"

                    ("In Hardwood Groves").

"One November morning, I was perched in a posture of prayer, as at a kneeling rail, on the second-story hall balcony that overlooks the great room of our new
home in Culpeper, Virginia. Out the Palladian window, my eyes followed the mowed path from the unfinished patio down the terraced perennial beds, in which
waved gay plumes of ornamental grass and dried bouquets of goldenrod, on through the vegetable garden, haunted by withered vines and skeleton stalks, into
the meadow, all amber this time of year, and out toward the gray scarf of naked trees and briar thicket that hugs Hungry Run.

"The sun rode low in the east, just high enough, however, to illuminate the wooded hill and pasture on the far side of the stream. The light, as in a Byzantine icon, seemed to issue not from an external source but from within temple walls. I missed this scene last fall. While our home was being built, I dug in dozens of shrubs and perennials and hundreds of spring bulbs on the backyard slope. But I worked late in the day, at sunset, when shadows shrouded the wood and pasture. My wife, June, and I moved in on Holy Week. By then, the daffodils that I had planted were spilling down the bank out back like yellow paint from a tipped-over bucket. And the maple trees were opening their clenched fists and drawing a sylvan veil over the temple sanctuary.

"In late November, the entire Blue Ridge rises transfigured.
As the leaves fall from the trees, the summer veil is lifted,
and darkness is made visible.
Through temples transparent, saints and sinners see into secret earthen sanctuaries.
I am reminded that when Jesus died on the accursed Tree,
the curtain of the Temple tore open,
and the Holy of Holies was shown.

"In late November, Advent begins, and the great Epiphany draws near.
The naked babe, blanketed in supernal light, is the Holy of Holies,
opened to ordinary eyes.
St. Ephrem the Syrian says that

    The Lord of all
    is the treasure store of all things:

    upon each according to his capacity
    He bestows a glimpse

    of the beauty of His hiddenness,
    of the splendor of His majesty.

    Hymns on Paradise, 9:25"

NOW

Now the silence, Now the Peace
Now the empty hands uplifted;
Now the kneeling, now the plea,
Now the Father's welcome,
Now the hearing, now the power,
Now the vessel brimmed for pouring;
Now the body, now the blood,
Now the Joyful Celebration;

Now the Wedding, Now the songs
Now the heart forgiven, leaping;
Now the Spirit's Visitation,
Now the Son's Epiphany,
Now the Father's Blesing,
Now, Now, Now.

Jaroslav J. Vajda

 

No music.....today I prefer some silence...

PHOTO BY: ArTeTeTrA

And I knew it would be alright...

It would be alright, originally uploaded by Lacking Focus.

"I saw an angel on the whitest November's morning.
And I heard her singing the sweetest cry,
as if she wanted to reach down,
And tell me it would be alright.
And I knew it would be alright."
-- The Ataris, "Begin Again at the Beginning"