Monthly Archives: June 2018

Jun302018

Say Only The Word

Ideologies dissipated, being immense,
The comfort of disappearing within the emergence of Truth,
Communion and unification,
No utterance, no verbiage, no useless chatter,
Idle and still, allowing, a quietness grows, infusion infiltrating,
Unafraid of mediocrity, fearing only myself, trusting…
The power of prayer experiencing an advancement,
Receiving beyond the bounds of entrapment, rubrics and law,
Obedience, obeisance, the willingness to be least, last,
Oh my surrender, oh my heart, oh my desire to go beyond my thoughts,
Unspoken, unheard, unbroken, cessation, penetration, illumination,
Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison.

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Jun292018

A poem by Robert Hugh Benson

LINES

I cannot soar and sing my Lord and love;
No eagle’s wings have I,
No power to rise and greet my King above,
No heart to fly.
Creative Lord Incarnate, let me lean
My heavy self on Thee;
Nor let my utter weakness come between
Thy strength and me.

I cannot trace Thy Providence and plan,
Nor dimly comprehend
What in Thyself Thou art, and what is man,
And what the end.
Here in this wilderness I cannot find
The path the Wise Men trod;
Grant me to rest on Thee, Incarnate Mind
And Word of God.

I cannot love, my heart is turned within
And locked within; (Ah me!
How shivering in self-love I sit) for sin
Has lost the key.
Ah! Sacred Heart of Jesus, Flame divine,
Ardent with great desire,
My hope is set upon that love of Thine,
Deep Well of Fire.

I cannot live alone another hour.
Jesu, be Thou my Life!
I have not Power to strive; be Thou my Power
In every strife!
I can do nothing — hope, nor love, nor fear,
But only fail and fall.
Be Thou my soul and self, O Jesu dear,
My God and all!

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Jun262018

New ways, perpetual transformation

The eventual disappearance of images, concepts and reasoning as vehicles communing with God is not merely a chronological occurrence that we await and then adapt to when it happens. In the nature of things, intimate relating to the divine demands a new dimension, an infused communion that transcends the created order. Finite realities are not adequate and proximate means to the infinite. There exists no proportion between them. Jumping higher and higher is no way to try and reach the moon. There is no proportion between human muscle power and leaving the planet. Something entirely new, rocket power, must be introduced if the latter is to be achieved.

To appreciate what John (St John of the Cross) is saying as he insists upon the insufficiency of the created order to bring us to the Uncreated, we must first grasp something of the utter otherness, the transcendence of God. He is not only beyond all things; He is boundlessly beyond them. Created realities are, as one of the councils puts it, more unlike God than like Him. Because no one gets anywhere without a means fit to the destruction, so faith is radically necessary to reach the inner life of the Trinity. The saint appeals to the philosophical axiom that all means must be proportioned to their ends. If a person wants to get to a particular city, he must take a road that leads to it. If a log is to burn, heat must be applied to it. The wood must be made like to the fire so that it may eventually ignite. “If the intellect, then, is to reach union with God in this life, insofar as is possible, it must take the means which bears a proximate resemblance to God and unites with Him. That which bears this near similitude to God is the virtue of faith. While created things bear a trace of the divine, none of them unites proximately with Him or has an essential correspondence to Him. The distance between creation and its Author is endless, and it is faith alone on earth that can bridge the gap. –Father Thomas Dubay ‘Fire Within: St Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, and the Gospel on Prayer’

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Jun252018

Predestiny

Hear me, O coastlands,
listen, O distant peoples.
The LORD called me from birth,
from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.
He made of me a sharp-edged sword
and concealed me in the shadow of his arm.
He made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me.
You are my servant, he said to me,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.

Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.
For now the LORD has spoken
who formed me as his servant from the womb,
that Jacob may be brought back to him
and Israel gathered to him;
and I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD,
and my God is now my strength!
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

Isaiah

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Jun232018

Maturity

I will hold your people in my heart,
I will hear in the voice of my brother the glory of praise,
I will see in my sister the glory of faith,
I will perceive Christ in all those who touch my life,
I will learn to love even further,

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Jun152018

Daily reading, a quieting

A man hiding in a cave,
Awaiting,
The world intent upon killing,
Awaiting,
And internal,
The wind that is within,
The fire that is within,
The earthquake that is within,
Blocking, overwhelming my self,

At the mountain of God, Horeb,
Elijah came to a cave, where he took shelter.
But the word of the LORD came to him,
“Go outside and stand on the mountain before the LORD;
the LORD will be passing by.”
A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains
and crushing rocks before the LORD—
but the LORD was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake—
but the LORD was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake there was fire—
but the LORD was not in the fire.
After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.
When he heard this,
Elijah hid his face in his cloak
and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.
A voice said to him, “Elijah, why are you here?”
He replied, “I have been most zealous for the LORD,
the God of hosts.
But the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant,
torn down your altars,
and put your prophets to the sword.
I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.”
The LORD said to him,
“Go, take the road back to the desert near Damascus.
When you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king of Aram.
Then you shall anoint Jehu, son of Nimshi, as king of Israel,
and Elisha, son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah,
as prophet to succeed you.”

1 Kings chapter 19

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Jun132018

Consuming Love

Noetic attitudes give birth
To eternal fire consuming
Accomplishing Unaccomplishability
Healing Heartbreaks-surrendering to Eternal promises
Neon Signs say:’Not here but ‘elsewhere-’
under their skeptical breath.
Boredom plants its dying seeds
Resurrected in deaths hour
Vitality seeks a higher ground
Fertility’s Perfected Flower
Like two lovers embracing
In the midst of a family day
Always one arms length apart
In holding they never tire,
Their hearts ever inflmaed
One for the Other
Never Consummating loves Desire
Two-laned traffic
Illumining the passing night
Transcendent perfection leaves its trace
In the forboding stillness of death
Hurrying both in each direction
Transcendence desires and seeks otherness
Death the passingness of the Hour
Lifting higher and higher
Like a father’s response to his Son
Or the rising Sun
Branding its welcoming rays
On the tallest skylines of cities
Or humble cottaged homes
Perfection resits its containment
To all that’s here below

Clinton R. LeFort

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