Thoughts on my birthday

 

Some of these "memes" from the Facebook page "The Garden of Bright Images" are very appropriate for me as I face my seventy-third birthday.   I still can't believe I am this old, or that this many years have passed.

Yes!

April's in the Skies

 

Here's a poem by Alicia Ostriker:

April 

BY ALICIA OSTRIKER

The optimists among us

taking heart because it is spring

skip along

attending their meetings

signing their e-mail petitions

marching with their satiric signs

singing their we shall overcome songs

posting their pungent twitters and blogs

believing in a better world

for no good reason

I envy them

said the old woman

 

The seasons go round they

go round and around

said the tulip

dancing among her friends

in their brown bed in the sun

in the April breeze

under a maple canopy

that was also dancing

only with greater motions

casting greater shadows

and the grass

hardly stirring

 

What a concerto

of good stinks said the dog

trotting along Riverside Drive

in the early spring afternoon

sniffing this way and that

how gratifying the cellos of the river

the tubas of the traffic

the trombones

of the leafing elms with the legato

of my rivals’ piss at their feet

and the leftover meat and grease

singing along in all the wastebaskets

 

Source: Poetry (February 2011)

 

I m amazed at this Spring

 

artist:  Esme Shapiro

Here's a poem from D.H.Lawrence:

"This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,

Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,

Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between

Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration

Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze

Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,

Faces of people streaming across my gaze."

 

-  D. H. Lawrence, The Enkindled Spring

artist: Daniel Garber

My heart is numbed too much for hopes or fears

 

Here is a wonderful poem by Christina Rossetti:

A Better Resurrection

by Christina Rossetti

I have no wit, no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone

Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears;

Look right, look left, I dwell alone;

I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief

No everlasting hills I see;

My life is in the falling leaf:

O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,

My harvest dwindled to a husk:

Truly my life is void and brief

And tedious in the barren dusk;

My life is like a frozen thing,

No bud nor greenness can I see:

Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;

O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,

A broken bowl that cannot hold

One drop of water for my soul

Or cordial in the searching cold;

Cast in the fire the perish’d thing;

Melt and remould it, till it be

A royal cup for Him, my King:

O Jesus, drink of me.

Source: “A Better Resurrection” from Goblin Market and other Poems, by

Christina Rossetti. Cambridge: Macmillan, 1862.

 

artist   Bonnie B Cook

 

I can't find the piece I wanted to post, so here is this one!

 

Easter Monday

 

art by John Faupel

Here's a poem by R.S. Thomas:

The Answer

 

by R.S. Thomas

 

Not darkness but twilight

In which even the best

of minds must make its way

now. And slowly the questions

occur, vague but formidable

for all that. We pass our hands

over their surface like blind

men feeling for the mechanism

that will swing them aside. They

yield, but only to re-form

as new problems; and one

does not even do that

but towers immovable

before us.

Is there no way

of other thought of answering

its challenge? There is an anticipation

of it to the point of

dying. There have been times

when, after long on my knees

in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled

from my mind, and I have looked

in and seen the old questions lie

folded and in a place

by themselves, like the piled

graveclothes of love’s risen body.

 

 

 art by Melinda Cooper

Get Used to Different

 

It's Holy Saturday, somehow appropriate that I speak of my experience of watching this show.

Recently I finished watching the 8 episodes of "The Chosen"  Season One.

I wasn't thrilled with the first episode, but each following episode hooked me even more.

What I believe as a Catholic, particularly the Incarnation, was not contradicted.  The stories from the New Testament are told with a lot of creative backstory, which I actually liked.

One of my favorite scenes was the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.  I've read that passage many times, but this dramatization really brought it to life.

I also loved that the Apostles were all young men - which, given the average life span at that time, was probably true.

But I have been especially captivated by the portrayal of Jesus.  As it says in the Gospel, he speaks with authority,  and heals, and clearly has a divine nature. But he's also down to earth: a little scruffy, witty, and warm.

The actor who portrays him is a devout Catholic, which I didn't know when I watched the series.

He has a wonderful face.  I am sure the real Jesus has a wonderful face.