Sunday, February 21, 2021

A Wintry beginning to Lent

 


Sunny and blue sky morning, but lots of snow on the ground.  25 degrees.  I like knowing that in six weeks it will be Easter, and Spring.



Here's a poem by Scott Cairns:


Possible Answers to Prayer

by Scott Cairns

Your petitions—though they continue to bear

just the one signature—have been duly recorded.

Your anxieties—despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent

entertainment value—nonetheless serve

to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance—all but obscured beneath

a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more

conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,

the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes

recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly

righteous indignation toward the many

whose habits and sympathies offend you—

these must burn away before you’ll apprehend

how near I am, with what fervor I adore

precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.

Source: “Possible Answers to Prayer” from Philokalia: New and Selected

Poems, by Scott Cairns. Lincoln, Nebraska: Zoo Press, 2002.





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