I ran across this poem by Denise Levertov recently while I was doing some writing about Ignatius Loyola’s view of gratitude. It may be July, but it’s pleasant to think about snow.

Praise wet snow
           falling early.
Praise the shadow
           my neighbor’s chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.
                      Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
           the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney’s shadow.
Praise
god or the gods, the unknown,
that which imagined us, which stays
our hand,
our murderous hand,
                      and gives us
still,
in the shadow of death,
           our daily life,
           and the dream still
of goodwill, of peace on earth.
Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.

Choruses from the Rock
T.S. Eliot

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.

by Mary Karr

Jesus wound up with his body nailed to a tree—
a torment he practically begged for,
or at least did nothing to stop. Pilate

watched the crowd go thumbs down
and weary, signed the order.
So centurions laid Jesus flat

on a long beam, arms run along the crosspiece.
In each palm a long spike was centered,
a stone chosen to drive it. (Skin

tears; the bones start to split.)
Once the cross got propped up,
the body hung heavy, a carcass—

in carne, the Latin poets say, in meat.
(—The breastbone a ship’s prow . . .)
At the end the man cried out

as men cry. (Tears that fill the eyes
grow dark drop and by drop: One
cries out.) On the third day,

the stone rolled back, to reveal
no corpse. History is rife
with such hoaxes. (Look at Herodotus.)

As to whether he multiplied
loaves and fishes, that’s common enough.
Poke seed-corn in a hole and see if more corn

doesn’t grow. Two fish in a pond
make more fishes. The altar of reason
supports such extravagance. (I don’t even know

how electricity works, but put trust
in light switches.) And the prospect
of love cheers me up, as gospel.

That some creator might strap on
an animal mask to travel our path between birth
and ignominious death—now that

makes me less lonely. And the rising up
at the end into glory—the white circle of bread
on the meat of each tongue that God

might enter us. For 2000-near years
my tribe has lined up at various altars,
so dumbly I open this mouth for bread and song.

Back in my coaching days I learned to develop a particular kind of vision: I saw details of my athletes’ performance that others would miss.  This one slouched a bit; that one overreached; and so on.  The vision was the product of careful, attentive, even loving work.  What others saw was just a boat full of rowers, either winning or losing.

I think that the Christian life involves a similar deepening of vision, of attentiveness.  How else can we explain the ways we see the world and do what we do?

A few days ago I was walking from class, in a good mood on a beautiful day.  Spring in Chestnut Hill is absolutely gorgeous, and I was just enjoying the walk.  But I nearly stopped in my tracks when I saw something that moved me, almost to tears.  A beautiful young woman had one arm around the back of a girl of maybe thirteen or fourteen, a student at the Campus School for children with severe disabilities.  With her other arm she was holding the girl’s hand as she stepped up onto a curb after crossing the street.  What struck me was how tender and intimate was this physical contact–in a word, how free.  Christ was right there, in flesh.

Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote about beauty that often goes unseen, “but the beholder wanting.”  How I wish others could have seen what I saw that day!  Such tenderness, such attentiveness to the need of the moment, to the opportunity to love.

Perhaps our prayer, our liturgy, our moral action, our practices of discernment–perhaps all these are simply the practices that make us ready to behold the opportunities to love.  Perhaps the Christian life is about becoming better beholders, better able to see the lighting flashes of divine grace that erupt underneath the flesh of those around us.

From “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches” by Mary Oliver:

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one’s foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one’s foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

Read the whole poem here.

Easter Wings

by George Herbert

Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:

With Thee
O let me rise,
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day Thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne;
And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.

With Thee
Let me combine,
And feel this day Thy victorie;
For, if I imp my wing on Thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

When he died in 2006, Stanley Kunitz was eulogized as the most accomplished American poet. Kunitz’s favorite poem was “God’s Grandeur” by the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins. He reads the poem, and explains how he found it, in this video produced by the Favorite Poem Project. (H/T to Jim Campbell for unearthing it.)

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

–e.e. cummings

The poet Mary Karr has just published a new book, Lit, in which she talks about her conversion to Catholicism as well her struggle with alcoholism.  She mentions in a recent interview that the Spiritual Exercises were an important part of her spiritual awakening. That’s all the excuse I need to mention Karr here, because she is one of my favorite poets.  Here’s a sample:

Disgraceland

Before my first communion, I clung to doubt
as Satan spider-like stalked
the orb of dark surrounding Eden

for a wormhole into paradise.
God had formed me from gel in my mother’s womb,
injected by my dad’s smart shoot.

They swapped sighs until
I came, smaller than a bite of burger.
Quietly, I grew till my lungs were done

then the Lord sailed a soul
like a lit arrow to inhabit me.
Maybe that piercing

made me howl at birth,
or the masked creatures whose scalpel
cut a lightning bolt to free me.

I was hoisted by the heels and swatted, fed
and hauled around. Time-lapse photos show
my fingers grow past crayon outlines,

my feet come to fill spike heels.
Eventually, I lurched out
to kiss the wrong mouths, get stewed,

and sulk around. Christ always stood
to one side with a glass of water.
I swatted the sap away.

When my thirst got great enough to ask,
a clear stream welled up inside,
some jade wave buoyed me forward,

and I found myself upright
in the instant, with a garden
inside my own ribs aflourish.

There, the arbor leafs.
The vines push out plump grapes.
You are loved, someone said. Take that

and eat it.

To Live in the Mercy of God

by Denise Levertov