Daniel Gibbons
October, teach me bright failing In the last orange blossoms of my squashes, In the flip of a woodpecker’s wing, As a shower of crimson leaves washes
To Whom Much Is Given
J.B. Toner
My gift? My gift? My burden, onus, cross, Spine-bending load, soul-chafing, grinding yoke, Bit, spur, leash, collar whereupon I choke, The gain that means my ease and freedom's loss— This gift of words, bequeathed I know not why: This keenest hound without a scent to track, This knight without a dragon to attack, This arrow with no target but the sky. Thou madest me a steward, but what for? A herald with no message to proclaim, Shall I condemn, exult, blaspheme, adore, Spit, sing, scream, carol, cry, laud, lie, praise, blame, Repudiate my powers forevermore— Or only murmur patiently Your name?
The Play Continues
J.B. Toner
For Peg
We tire, and wither, and our souls grow old; The trillion miracles that swarm our sight No longer lend our hoary hearts delight— Bright kings enthroned, we weary of our gold. But oh, our Father is more young than we: A child who never tires of one glad tale, He calls an encore, lifely, without fail, And younger actors age-old lines do read. For every birth renews, redeems, the world— To startled eyes, just closed on Heaven's views, The dazzling panoramas are unfurled, With dawn-dew-dappled grace freshly imbued; And one child born to one good-hearted girl Can make the very earth and heavens new.
Little Hours
K.K. Adams
Lying heavy in my bed
I hear the murmured
whimper of a son
lauding his hunger
in the darkness
and, opening one eye,
see the hour—3 a.m.
I will arise,
hoisting my heaviness
out of the warmth
of my bed,
to keep this vigil,
to be a comforter,
to invite another in.
Refiner’s Fire
Shannon Berry
After
In the Old Testament, fire was a purifying element. The sacrifices were burnt because the Jews believed that their sins were transferred to the animal on the altar, and the burning devoured these sins and sent the aroma of repentance to the God above. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul takes this idea a step further, adapts it to fit Christianity and says that we should offer our bodies as living sacrifices, making our very lives offerings to God, making our lives blazing, constant, purifying fires. Fires that burn, spark, and glow. Fires within. This same fire urged Teresa of Avila to reform her religious order, which had fallen into laziness and wealth. It drove her to sit for hours praying whether she felt anything or not. It’s a fire that isn’t extinguished unless we kill it, heaping buckets of lukewarm water on the blaze. [Read more…]
Villian, elle?
Daniel Gibbons
I am a burning book, a book of flame:
pale letters glow on skin-thin ash
an instant as your hand crumbles cinders, same.
If a book burns in the forest, without reader or name,
Is it no book, a glob of marks?—In its pages stashed:
“I am a burning book, a book of flame!” [Read more…]
The Edge of the Sea
Cristina Montes
The scent from the bay
carries something like memories
from the edge of the sea
where the sun goes
at the end of the day.
I inhale the breeze
As I watch the sun retreat
into the edge of the sea,
and I wonder what’s there,
and why the scents
from the edge of the sea
seem to carry memories,
and whether the ships
moored along the harbor
ever get there.
Catholic Education and Masturbation
Fr. Damien Ference
Much has been written about the dramatic shift that took place in Catholic education after the Second Vatican Council. The Baltimore Catechism was out and Buddy Christ was in. The memorization of basic foundational formulations of our faith such as the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes and the Corporal Works of Mercy took a backseat to a new style of catechesis fueled by construction paper, paste, and pictures that were assembled into a collage about how Jesus made us feel. Sin was a topic we never heard much about, unless sin meant disobeying mom and dad. God was nice and we should be, too. Jesus had long hair, wore sandals, and ate organic food. The whole experience of Catholic education in the early 1980s can best be summed up by the title of the hymnal filled with songs by Carey Landry and his fellow St. Louis Jesuits (who gave us the hit “Great Things Happen When God Mixes with Us”): Hi God! [Read more…]
Ephphetha, that is, Be Opened
Shannon Berry
Then he looked up to heaven and groaned —Mark 7:34
I.
At the solitude of pinewood rooms
at the silence of photographs
the internal motions pause and quiver.
Words slide through sockets,
squeeze through cracks between hinges
press through the sieves of screens.
Letters burn like Autumn leaves
smoking out September. [Read more…]
Night Crossing
Amos Johannes Hunt
Who then is this, whom even wind and sea
submit to for instruction, who shuts up
their elemental raging, interrupts
their wild destruction with authority?
What then is this authority, that made
us cross at night, without a stated cause,
without assurance that the thoughtless laws
of nature would not trump our brave crusade?
Where then is this crusade advancing to?
What fate can this most questionary man
be on his way to meeting in this poor
and questionable world? And once more, who,
and who, and who is this, who proves he can
sleep easily when death is at his door?
