Four Poems for Lent
This is the Wilderness We Choose: our Lenten journey, day 6
A small pause for day 6 for some poetry. This is my sharing for the last day of February. Later, I hope to share something for 1st March. These days have been a flurry, and so poetry feels just the thing to settle back into the peace of the season.
'For Lent, 1966' by Madeleine L'Engle
•
It is my Lent to break my Lent,
To eat when I would fast,
To know when slender strength is spent,
Take shelter from the blast
When I would run with wind and rain,
To sleep when I would watch.
It is my Lent to smile at pain
But not ignore its touch.
◇
It is my Lent to listen well
When I would be alone,
To talk when I would rather dwell
In silence, turn from none
Who call on me, to try to see
That what is truly meant
Is not my choice. If Christ’s I’d be
It’s thus I’ll keep my Lent.
Rhythm of Lent by Virginia M. Kimball
•
The day dims to evening,
rosy sky tingeing
cold bare limbs
with pink tinting.
Wind howls meaning,
inner soul tingling.
Frigid cold wrapping,
on a coffin tapping.
◇
Yet off to Compline,
this first day of Lent,
darkness creeping
on the sunset seeping,
chanted prayer singing
plaintive night shortening,
incense in vision ringing.
◇
Rhythm of days proceed,
filling steady with hope:
prayers dressed in candlelight,
dark holes in a cosmos plight.
◇
Stars birthing from strange, deep
abysses of compressed
energy, brilliance emerging
from death, a glory surging
in mystery,
God asking Job, "Were you there
when I formed the earth?" (Job 38: 4)
"Have you seen the gates of darkness?" (17)
"Was it you who formed the deep?" (8)
◇
From the mystery of nothing
we come by the breath of God.
From a valley of darkness walking,
yearning for Christ without talking,
from dimmer to brighter,
from shorter to longer,
the steps of this path
a cadence grows greater,
the pulse of Creator,
the beat with His heart,
to faith that is stronger.
Life's Arrival in Time and Space by Virginia M. Kimball
•
Looking, see ... the sun’s arc
over earth ... the Spring’s
equinox ... day’s time in
balance with ... night’s time and
sun standing ... still between
night darkness ... and day’s light!
Passover ... when the Light
Creation ... washes life
over death ... Lamb’s life
sacrificed ... and freedom
escaping ... to Eden
God’s shalom ... forever.
◇
Pre-empting ... the northern
Spring solstice ... Incarnate
Yahweh comes ... earth tilting
toward life ... while sun’s rays
life-giving ... with water
sun warming ... and waiting
to plant in ... fertile ground
a sacred ... seed of life
Annunciation.
PLEASE CAN I HAVE A GOD by Christine Valters-Paintner
(after Selima Hill)
•
not fossilized, hardened, stiff, unshaken,
not contained in creeds and testimonies,
judgments and stone tablets,
but in the wound breaking open.
◇
Please can I have a God
who asks me to worship at the altar of mystery,
to lay aside certainty, and curl up
in the hollow of a great stone down by the river,
to hear the force of it rushing past.
◇
Please can I have a God
with questions rather than answers,
who is not Rock or Fortress or Father,
but sashays, swerves, ripens,
rages at the rape of the earth.
◇
Please can I have a God
whose voice is the sound of a girl, long silent from abuse,
now speaking her first word,
who is not sweetness or light, but the fierce sound of
“no” in all the places where love has been extinguished.
◇
Please can I have a God
the color of doubt, the shape of uncertainty
who sees that within me dwells a multitude,
grief and joy, envy and generosity, rage and raucousness,
and anoints every last part.
◇
Please can I have a God who rolls her eyes
with me at platitudes and pronouncements
and walks by my side in the early morning
across the wet field, together bare-footed and broken-hearted,
who is both mud and dew.
◇
Please can I have a God
who is the vast indifference of forest and night sky,
who is both eclipse and radiance, silence and scream,
who is everything slow and dark and moist,
who is not measured, controlled, but ecstatic and dancing.
◇
Please can I have a God
who is not the flame, but the flickering,
not bread, but the chewing and swallowing,
not Lover and Beloved, but the making love,
not the dog, but the joyful exuberance when I come home.
•
Sources:
Madeleine L'Engle from https://englewoodreview.org/lent-seven-of-our-favorite-poems/
Virginia M. Kimball from https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/p/poems-for-lent-by-virginia-m-kimball.php
Christina Valters-Paintner from ‘Dreaming Of Stones: Poems’, Paraclete Press, 2019.