For Our Children

Albert Edelfelt

For Our Children

Father, hear us, we are praying,
Hear the words our hearts are saying;
We are praying for our children.

Keep them from the powers of evil,
From the secret, hidden peril;
Father, hear us for our children.

From the whirlpool that would suck them,
From the treacherous quicksand, pluck them;
Father, hear us for our children.

From the worldling’s hollow gladness,
From the sting of faithless sadness,
Father, Father, keep our children.

Through life’s troubles waters steer them;
Through  life’s bitter battle cheer them;
Father, Father, be Thou near them.

Read the language of our longing,
Read the wordless pleadings thronging,
Holy Father, for our children.

And wherever they may bide,
Lead them Home at eventide.

      Amy Carmichael 

A hard day. Too often, as a parent, I don't know what to do or think. I'm in that place again. I'm heartsick for my boy. What is happening? There are too many questions without answers. What can I do to help him when I don't even understand what's happening?  Fear, fear, fear - sometimes it floods me and carries me away with it. I know better. I know better. But it's got it's grip on me. God help me. God help him. God help us all. "Read the language of our longing."

 

Five A.M. In the Pinewoods

David Grossmann, "Among the Fallen Leaves"

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

I’d seen

their hoofprints in the deep

needles and knew

they ended the long night

under the pines, walking

like two mute

and beautiful women toward

the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and

went there. They came

slowly down the hill

and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly

they stepped

closer and stared

from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp

tassels of weeds. This

is not a poem about a dream,

though it could be.

This is a poem about the world

that is ours, or could be.

Finally

one of them—I swear it!—

would have come to my arms.

But the other

stamped sharp hoof in the

pine needles like

the tap of sanity,

and they went off together through

the trees. When I woke

I was alone,

I was thinking:

so this is how you swim inward,

so this is how you flow outward,

so this is how you pray.

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver uses such a light touch in her nature poems.*The way she describes here how she watches the deer, waits for them, still and silent as they come toward her, seems to me to be a description also of how she writes a poem. She doesn't push her ideas forward, she waits for the thoughts and ideas to come of their own volition. You might wonder, is that unusual? Probably not. But each poet has their own way of working (sometimes each poem has its own way too, I suppose), and it matters. Some know exactly what they want to say, and go about getting it down. Some make lists, and describe, as if getting the thing or idea or place down piece by piece. And some let the words come, not knowing what they will say. It makes a difference, how a poem happens. That last stanza  - I keep reading it over and over. I wonder if she's saying Oh, so this poem is a prayer. As if, at the end of writing these lines she now sees what the poem meant itself to be.

  
*see also "Snowy Night" posted Feb.4, 2017 

from A Prayer for the Past

Sampo Kaikkonen

from A Prayer for the Past

All sights and sounds of day and year,

All groups and forms, each leaf and gem,

Are thine, O God, nor will I fear

To talk to thee of them.

Too great thy heart is to despise,

Whose day girds centuries about;

From things which we name small, thine eyes

See great things looking out.

Therefore the prayerful song I sing

May come to thee in ordered words:

Though lowly born, it needs not cling

In terror to its chords.

I think that nothing made is lost;

That not a moon has ever shone,

That not a cloud my eyes hath crossed

But to my soul is gone.

That all the lost years garnered lie

In this thy casket, my dim soul;

And thou wilt, once, the key apply,

And show the shining whole.

George Macdonald 

"Nothing made is lost." 

One of the most comforting lines in a poem. Just think, that dandelion, that beetle, that mouse - all creatures and creation - not one thing lost or forgotten or overlooked, everything with meaning and purpose and worth. Nothing disposable, everything essential, every bit indispensable individually and to the whole. Is it possible? Is it really possible? 

Yes.

 

A Prayer in Spring

Nikolai Astrup, "Apple Trees in Bloom"

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;

And make us happy in the happy bees,

The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird

That suddenly above the bees is heard,

The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,

The which it is reserved for God above

To sanctify to what far ends He will,

But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Robert Frost

There are too many worries crowding in. What's going to happen? What can I do about this problem? And what if  that happens? My head is spinning. And yet there's nothing I can do. I can't make anything better by worrying. All I can do is surrender it up, and pray, and move forward into the day and the things and events and people in it. In fact, I might as well enjoy what there is to enjoy right here in front of me. "Keep us here." Yes, please, here, where the leaves are greening, the garden is filling in, here, now. 

i am a little church

Charles White, ""Move On Up a Little Higher"

i am a little church

i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendour and squalor of hurrying cities
--i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are the prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
--i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

e.e. cummings

Now here is a poem I hold in my heart. So cup-overflowing with joy, so drenched in gratitude and shining with praise. "My prayers are the prayers of earth's own clumsily striving...children" - so true, clumsily striving children - I am definitely one of those. I can hardly call this a poem - it seems to come more and more alive, until it sings - it actually sings in me. I can't even think about how it was written, it's so loud. It says so much that (for me) it drowns out the author. Like one of those rare moments when the writer becomes an open channel for beauty. "Around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection" - beautiful. And most beautiful of all - "i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence" - I've mentioned before how cumming's God is the power of "Yes", and "Now". Well, Yes! and Now! and Amen, Amen, Amen. May this be the truth I stand in always.








 

Thanksgiving Day

Cofleidior Bryniau (Embrace the Hills) - Bob Guy

i thank You God for most this amazing

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 of 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

 I love how Cummings turns words and phrases inside out and backwards, everything unfurls and uncurls for me, its like going the wrong way down a one-way street - everything is the same but looks and feels so different (I'm not talking about the fear the oncoming cars put in you). That phrase "lifted from the no of all nothing - human merely being" - yes, I want so much to be awake, to see "everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes"! In Cummings poems, God seems to be the great Yes. (As opposed to the "no of all nothing".) I love that. One of my very favorite poems ever is about Yes (coming soon, don't you worry). Anyway, this is the poem/prayer I hold to this Thanksgiving and every other day as well.