faith

The Little Birds of St. Francis

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

pexels-photo-436790.jpegThe little birds fly to ask me what I have seen in the heavens: I saw your little souls longing. – Tadeusz Micinski

Our feeble wings
knock against
a blue windowpane, Lord.
We wait, we sing
every day at your door.

We gaze at the sun,
above the trees flutter
and sing since the dawn.
Are we forever
to linger on earth
in this world of yours, Lord?

There is no penance,
Is there no reward?
Lost in our own song,
one day of the year
among the trees, we’ll expire,
entangled in the leaves.

The wind will lift us,
the earth will receive us
burying the dry wings.
Will none of us, Lord
sing in the heavens
facing your throne?

Is not our singing,
pleasing to you, Lord?
Our singing choose,
Our waiting use.
From the unknown,
deliver the birds on high, Lord.

From the ends of the earth
unbounded and vast,
from pine and beech
from our home
we’ll fly, we’ll flutter
to your side, Lord.

Whatever your will –
too deep for the birds –
on earth and in heaven
your eyes to please,
your smile to see,
we wing, crowding the trees.

– Jerzy Liebert

Do Not Be Ashamed – Wendell Berry

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
“I am not ashamed.” A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.

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stopping is not arriving

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

“In a Zen koan, someone said that an enlightened man is not one who seeks Buddha or finds Buddha, but simply an ordinary man who has nothing left to do. Yet stopping is not arriving. To stop is to stay a million miles from it and to do nothing is to miss it by the whole width of the universe.

“As for arriving, when you arrive you are ruined. Yet how close the solution is: how simple it would be to have nothing more to do if only one had really nothing more to do.

“The man who is unripe cannot get there, no matter what he does or does not do. But the ripe fruit falls out of the tree without even thinking about it. Why?

“The man who is ripe discovers there was never anything to be done from the very beginning.”

– Thomas Merton’s Journal, March 10, 1963

“Every concept grasped by the mind becomes an obstacle in the quest for those who search.”

– Gregory of Nyssa

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Breathing Underwater by Sr. Carol Bieleck, RSCJ

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

I built my house by the sea.
Not on the sands, mind you,
not on the shifting sand.
And I built it of rock.
A strong house
by a strong sea.
And we got well acquainted, the sea and I.
Good neighbors.
Not that we spoke much.
We met in silences,
respectful, keeping our distance
but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand.
Always the fence of sand our barrier,
always the sand between.
And then one day
(and I still don’t know how it happened)
The sea came.
Without warning.
Without welcome even.
Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand like wine,
less like the flow of water than the flow of blood.
Slow, but flowing like an open wound.
And I thought of flight, and I thought of drowning, and I thought of death.
But while I thought, the sea crept higher till it reached my door.
And I knew that there was neither flight nor death nor drowning.
That when the sea comes calling you stop being good neighbors,
Well acquainted, friendly from a distance neighbors.
And you give your house for a coral castle
And you learn to breathe under water.

You can purchase Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and The Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr OFM from the Center for Action and Contemplation Book Store http://store.cac.org/Breathing-Under-Water_p_15.html

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Listen to the spirit – Henri Nouwen

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Living a spiritual life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation. But it always involves an inner experience of oneness. We realize that we are in the center, and that from there all that is and all that takes place can be seen and understood as part of the mystery of God’s life with us. Our conflicts and pains, our tasks and promises, our families and friends, our activities and projects, our hopes and aspirations, no longer appear to us a fatiguing variety of things that we can barely keep together, but rather as affirmations and revelations of the new life of the Spirit in us. “All these other things,” which so occupied and preoccupied us, now come as gifts or challenges that strengthen and deepen the new life that we have discovered. This does not mean that the spiritual life makes things easier or takes our struggles and pains away. The lives of Jesus’ disciples clearly show that suffering does not diminish because of conversion. Sometimes it even becomes more intense. But our attention is no longer directed to the “more or less.” What matters is to listen attentively to the Spirit and to go obediently where we are being led, whether to a joyful or a painful place.

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