Hallelu Yah

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah

- Leonard Cohen, from 'Hymns of the 49th Parallel'

Prayer

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.

- George Herbert

Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty

Kingfishers and Dragonflies

‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme’
AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

Grand

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 - Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'God's Grandeur'

Christ's Presence in Creation

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice - and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.

- Joseph Mary Plunkett (killed by the British in the Irish Easter Rising of 1916)

Know What I Mean?

The following lyrics for 'Hurt' come with all of the hurt, pain, and crying-out-loud honesty of an Old Testament psalm. Sung and publicized by Johnny Cash shortly before his death, these words hurt in the singing, in the reading and in the remembering. The hope of keeping oneself and finding another way if given more time, another chance - is gone. O, if only to have another shot at getting life right.

All the many ways we hurt ourselves and others (reality check !! - all the many ways I hurt myself - and others), till there comes a time, an age when we are past feeling even our hurts.

Though Johnny Cash was a Christian - after many years of wandering and wondering and trying to find love (often, as do we all, in all the wrong places) the deep feelings and memories of past failures haunt him, as maybe they do us, too. 

Better a living dog than a dead lion, says the proverb and one who is alive may yet hope again but only, only through Him who is Hope and Life himself.

Here's the song - Jesus in the Hope, the Healer.

I hurt myself today

To see if I still feel

I focus on the pain

The only thing that’s real

The needle tears a hole

The old familiar sting

Try to kill it all away

But I remember everything

What have I become?

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know

Goes away in the end

You could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns 

Upon my liar’s chair

Full of broken thoughts

I cannot repair

Beneath the stains of time

The feelings disappear

You are someone else

I am still right here

What have I become?

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know

Goes away in the end

You could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

If I could start again

A million miles away

I would keep myself

I would find a way

- written by Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails

Shared

Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased - thus do we refute entropy.

- Spider Robinson

Circle of Quiet

We all need such a place . . . what Madeline L'Engle meant, in the book of that name - My special place . . . a small brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet from which there is no visible sign of human beings. . . . [there] I move slowly into a kind of peace that is indeed marvelous, 'annihilating all that's made to a green thought in a green shade.'"

How I Managed to Get Up Today

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the threeness, 

Through confession of the oneness

Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,

Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,

Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,

Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of Cherumbim,

to obedience of angels,

to the service of archangels,

In hope of resurrection to meet with reward.

In prayers of patriarchs,

In prediction of prophets,

In preaching of apostles,

In faith of confessors,

In innocence of holy virgins,

In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,

Splendour of fire, 

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of wind,

Depth of sea,

Stability of earth,

Firmness of rock.

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me:

God's might to uphold me, 

God's wisdom to guide me,

God's eye to look before me,

God's ear to hear me,

God's word to speak to me,

God's hand to guard me,

God's way to be before me,

God's shield to protect me,

God's host to save me,

From snares of devils,

From temptations of vices,

From everyone who shall wish me ill,

Afar and anear,

Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all those powers between me and those evils,

Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,

Against incantations of false prophets,

Against black laws of pagandom,

Against false laws of heretics,

Against craft of idolotry,

Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,

Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ to shield me today

Against poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against wounding,

So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me.

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every one who thinks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness,

Of the Creator of Creation

- ascribed to St. Patrick, 5th Century Apostle to Ireland

Not Fun . . .

Some folk are interesting - exciting even, to know - but they're not fun to walk with . . . 

Heart Ache

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said - that to be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.

Crying . . .

Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tanguni.

These are the tears of things,
and the stuff of our mortality cuts us to the heart

- Virgil