Poem of the Week: The Prayer Perfect

The Prayer Perfect

by James Whitcomb Riley

Dear Lord! kind Lord!
Gracious Lord! I pray
Thou wilt look on all I love,
Tenderly to-day!
Weed their hearts of weariness;
Scatter every care,
Down a wake of angel wings
Winnowing the air.
Bring unto the sorrowing
All release from pain;
Let the lips of laughter
Overflow again;
And with all the needy
O divide, I pray,
This vast treasure of content
That is mine to-day!

Poem of the Week: Christ as a Gardener

Christ as a Gardener
By Andrew Hudgins

The boxwoods planted in the park spelled LIVE.
I never noticed it until they died.
Before, the entwined green had smudged the word
unreadable. And when they take their own advice
again—come spring, come Easter—no one will know
a word is buried in the leaves. I love the way
that Mary thought her resurrected Lord
a gardener. It wasn’t just the broad-brimmed hat
and muddy robe that fooled her: He was that changed. He looks across the unturned field, the riot
of unscythed grass, the smattering of wildflowers.
Before he can stop himself, he’s on his knees.
He roots up stubborn weeds, pinches the suckers,
deciding order here—what lives, what dies,
and how. But it goes deeper even than that.
His hands burn and his bare feet smolder. He longs
to lie down inside the long, dew-moist furrows
and press his pierced side and his broken forehead
into the dirt. But he’s already done it—
passed through one death and out the other side.
He laughs. He kicks his bright spade in the earth
and turns it over. Spring flashes by, then harvest.
Beneath his feet, seeds dance into the air.
They rise, and he, not noticing, ascends
on midair steppingstones of dandelion,
of milkweed, thistle, cattail, and goldenrod.


HT: The Behemoth

Awesome American History: 1812-1820

This covered pages 69-77 in The American Story.  The topics were Uncle Sam, Audubon, and whaling.

The active activity was supposed to be a bird walk (like Audubon), but it was unseasonably cold and windy, so we skipped it.

The art activity was fairly active, though!

We drew whales,ships and islands lightly on paper, then had the kids turn the pages over on carpet and stab them with pencils (trying to ht the "whale").

this is a variant on a game my Dad played as a kid during WWII, except he drew tanks or ships.

At any rate, the kids loved it! 

For our snack, I wanted to do chipped beef, since that was close to what "Uncle" Sam Wilson was selling to the US government, but it was a Friday during Lent, so we went with the all-American apple pie instead.

So this was actually the Friday before Holy Week.  We didn't have class on Good Friday, but we did do two special things: we visited the Basilica for the Memorial of the Lord's Passion,(and were able to venerate their relics of the Passion!), and we did our own Living Stations.

This year, the kids did them completely on their own, and I loved it so much, I took pictures of each one, and I am hoping to print them as a book for our family.

Here is the one of Veronica wiping the face of Jesus:

Wordless Wednesday: Arboretum

Catching Up

 The weekend before Easter we visited my folks in NJ and celebrated Leena's birthday (from March) and Choclo and Oob's birthdays (coming up in May).

We all had a wonderful time together!

We broke some coal for them, and planted a little garden, and played pigs knuckles.

Back at the ranch, we decorated the church for Easter.

This took up enough of my brain that little details like, I don't know, inviting my extended family for Easter, kind of got forgotten about until the middle of Holy Week!

Fortunately, they were still able to come, and we had a great time with them!

Plus I made jello. Fourteen layers.  Because I'm crazy, obviously.

Happy Easter!

Easter Poem: Seven Stanzas at Easter

Seven Stanzas at Easter
John Updike (1932–2009)

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.


Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

HT: Journey With Jesus 

This poem gives me such joy!  It seems like the older I get and the more loved ones I see passing, the reality of the Death and Resurrection of God gives me more and more joy.  Easter means I will see them again, and I will see Jesus face to face and the joy of that future meeting overflows into the present.

Good Friday Poem: The Dream of the Rood

From “The Dream of the Rood”
 
Anglo-Saxon, 8^th century, trans. Richard Hammer (1970)
The earliest Christian poem in English
The Rood (cross of Christ) speaks:

“It was long past – I still remember it –
That I was cut down at the copse’s end,
Moved from my root. Strong enemies there took me,
Told me to hold aloft their criminals,
Made me a spectacle. Men carried me
Upon their shoulders, set me on a hill,
A host of enemies there fastened me.

“And then I saw the Lord of all mankind
Hasten with eager zeal that He might mount
Upon me. I durst not against God’s word
Bend down or break, when I saw tremble all
The surface of the earth. Although I might
Have struck down all the foes, yet stood I fast.

“Then the young hero (who was God almighty)
Got ready, resolute and strong in heart.
He climbed onto the lofty gallows-tree,
Bold in the sight of many watching men,
When He intended to redeem mankind.
I trembled as the warrior embraced me.
But still I dared not bend down to the earth,
Fall to the ground. Upright I had to stand.

“A rood I was raised up; and I held high
The noble King, the Lord of heaven above.
I dared not stoop. They pierced me with dark nails;
The scars can still be clearly seen on me,

The open wounds of malice. Yet might I
Not harm them. They reviled us both together.
I was made wet all over with the blood
Which poured out from his side, after He had
Sent forth His spirit. And I underwent
Full many a dire experience on that hill.
I saw the God of hosts stretched grimly out.
Darkness covered the Ruler’s corpse with clouds
His shining beauty; shadows passed across,
Black in the darkness. All creation wept,
Bewailed the King’s death; Christ was on the cross….

“Now you may understand, dear warrior,
That I have suffered deeds of wicked men
And grievous sorrows. Now the time has come
That far and wide on earth men honor me,
And all this great and glorious creation,
And to this beacon offers prayers. On me
The Son of God once suffered; therefore now
I tower mighty underneath the heavens,
And I may heal all those in awe of me.
Once I became the cruelest of tortures,
Most hateful to all nations, till the time
I opened the right way of life for men.”

HT: Patheos

Holy Thursday Poem: The Agony

The Agony 

Philosophers have measured mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.

Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man, so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments, bloody be.
Sin is that Press and Vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through every vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay,
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.
by George Herbert 1593-1633

Wordless Wednesday: National Gallery + Arboretum

Gospel Dessert: Palm Sunday

I was away visiting my folks for the weekend, but, when I got back,  Klenda had made a tiramisu cake with a palm theme.

We're excited to be entering Holy Week!

It's also spring break week for Klenda and Mxyl, so we'll be doing some special things with them.

We'll be helping out with decorating the church for the Triduum.

We won't be doing any of our usual classes, although we will visit the Basilica for Adventurers.

Hope you are having a great Holy Week, too- let's keep each other in prayer!

Poem of the Week: The Meaning of the Look

The Meaning of the Look

I think that look of Christ might seem to say--
'Thou Peter ! art thou then a common stone
Which I at last must break my heart upon
For all God's charge to his high angels may
Guard my foot better ? Did I yesterday
Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run
Quick to deny me 'neath the morning sun ?
And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray ?
The cock crows coldly.--GO, and manifest
A late contrition, but no bootless fear !
For when thy final need is dreariest,
Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here;
My voice to God and angels shall attest,
Because I KNOW this man, let him be clear.'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

HT: Poem Hunter

Wordless Wednesday: C + O Canal Walk