gratitude

waking up

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

The conviction that I have not even begun to write, to think, to pray, and to live, and that only now am I getting down to waking up. And that, by God’s grace, this comes from finally trying, with great difficulty, to be genuinely free and alone, as humbly as I can, in God’s sight, without passively accepting all the standards and the formulas which have been adopted by others – or, at least, that I am now exercising a wider choice in my sources of inspiration.   – Thomas Merton, journal entry June 22, 1958

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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

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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