Stripped bare to the bone, still bleeding,
Slow the process, less needing,
Beyond healing, on into salvation,
Reduced obsession, trusting beatification,
Content within longing superseding,
Removing the heartbreak of chaotic feelings,
The numbness within childish dreams overwhelming,
Reared, raised, and fettered, growing amongst a multitude of endeavors,
Knowing no better, progressing agitated on through simple grace,
Understanding immensity, the omnipresence, presented within sanctifying grace,
Confusing, alluring, enticing, refreshing, continuously quiet meditation,
Discarded masks aplenty, rejected desperate costuming, complexity of layers refusing,
No self-promoting adulation, no individual praise, no self-appointed grandeur, no self-sustaining ways, no avenues to false wisdom,
Shutdown, seriously hampered, no ripples nor continuing waves,
Worldly approval rebuked, rejected subtle invasions of perceived glory, rewarding the detached reality of renouncement,
Repentance immediate, the patience within profound imperfection, needing no longer dramatics,
Hysterical dancing in stillness, the slow movement of chaotic thoughts contently let go,
Everything continues, nothingness underlying, something greater patient and kind,
Let it be, whispered words of wisdom forgotten, let it be, let it be,
Accordance, congruity the reflecting attempt prevailing within fortitude,
Nasty disposition emerging, ornery centering upon intentional irritation, denunciation, promoting isolation,
Content in the practice of prayer, left alone within divine intimacy, satiated, further refinement still needed, no need to push away,
Unprofitable servant experiencing obligation, nothing more, nothing needing undone, doing what only needs done,
Lord keep on working, Lord keep pursuing, allow the advancement of placing attentively my hand upon my mouth,
Grant me the courage to silence myself, the will to acquiesce without battle, the abandonment of righteous refusal, the sterility of establishing religious credentials,
Knowing surrender within moments, followed by moments, reposing quaintly on into perpetual holy salutation immersed in the Cross,
Lord keep me close, the awareness of a divine image and likeness coalescing with original sin, an individual bereft,
Humbled by everything seen, by everything thought and done, experiencing the pain of wandering away,
Grace the receiving, grace the receding, grace the emptiness of restrained desperation, the lack of effort resounding,
The sound of a destitute lack of rhyming and scheming, left alone breathing, beyond the Quietest, no emptying, no effort, on into the loving arms of a Savior,
The Eucharist abiding, always waiting, standing tall while emanating, temper the refrain of every return to profound calming,
You who was, is, and still to come, announce the welcome of every tear fallen from heaven, the removal of vanity blinding the submission,
Make sense of the nonsensical within the strife of division, the divide of impermanence calling forth grand derision,
Lord make me simple, humble, lacking self-consciousness,
The crazed constant looking about, the feelings of woundedness, the reality of brokenness, accepted, released, unburdeneded, unphased by the inevitable slip, trip and fall.
Lord grace the awareness of You within every breath while breathing ‘bring me home for eternity’.

GETHSEMANE

When Jesus entered in Gethsemane
With Peter and the sons of Zebedee,
He said with mortal dread:
“Remain and stay awake with me.”

Three times he prayed: “O Father, if it be
Your will, then take this cup away,” as he
Turned wet with blood-filled sweat,
“Though not my will, but your decree.”

As thrice he rose and went to find his three
Disciples fast asleep, he told them: “See
You stay awake to pray
That from the test you may be free.”

The spirit wills, the flesh is weak, and we,
O Christ, our Lord, have but a single plea
To make–to stay awake
With you and pray on bended knee!

Stephen Wentworth Arndt, Ph.D

Final station of the Cross at Immaculate Conception Cleveland

Pleasant day of socializing and worship. Here is a piece, a rondeau (in French), performed by Mignarda, during their splendid performance at Immaculate Conception.

When I simply lose sight of you
You, by whom I am so cherished,
My misfortune attacks me so fiercely
That I am so overcome with sadness,
That it would take little for my heart to fail.

Because I have become yours
More than anyone’s under the heaven,
All my joy leaves me
When I simply lose sight of you
By whom I am held so dear,
My misfortune attacks me so fiercely.

That I can well see that I am stripped
Of all my goods, dumb like a beast,
For whom there is no longer warmth,
For well I know that I must be
Alone, deprived of every good thing.

When I simply lose sight of you
You, by whom I am so cherished,
My misfortune attacks me so fiercely
That I am so overcome with sadness,
That it would take little for my heart to fail.

Johannes Ockeghem (c.1425 – 1497)

Book by Mater Dolorosa lecturer David J. Rothenberg, chair of the Case Western Music Department

Shiny allurement harboring idle hours, extraneous entertainment,
Pebbles scattered beneath the rushing flow of a mountain stream, movement and inertia,
Flowing purposefully without knowing, gravity eroding, water transferring, external excitation,
All things onto themselves, the image and likeness reserved for responsibility, dreams and occupations, careers and destinations,
Beads of a Rosary majestically throwing roses at Our Lady’s feet, conversely tossing grenades, knowing life during wartime, packed up and ready to go,
Passing through fingertips while reciting, quiet and still, a space within a space creatively unfolding, a raging battle ensues,
Centered upon expansion increasing attention, diffusion erased, amassing essential, entirety within totality, a monotonous refrain,
Unification erasing a sense of the immense divide, a moment in time, hung upon simple words, a harmonious roar from a concealed song,
A return to a heartbeat, the call of the wild, blood pumping through veins,
Kindness and gentleness within diversity, desires, and proclamations, commitments attached to not always starting anew, reflecting while persisting,
Diffusion, dispersion, spreading out recklessly, incited by boredom, weakness, and vain, helpless, helpless, helpless amidst floundering steps,
Unending to the end, imperfection cultivates subtly upon awareness, grace the grand endeavor, a hand reaching down from the sky, blood pouring forth from the wounds of the Cross.
Helpless, helpless, helpless on into…

In anonymity swallowed the arresting of forgotten sorrows,
The blessings of being left alone in the company of treasured tomorrows,
There is this space, countless and divine, interior refined, borrowed in time,
Consciousness accountability tethering a wheel inside a wheel, love maintaining, persevering through weakness,
Exhaustion pouring forth through the portals of immpermancy, tears raining down, washing in blood,
Tired of trying, tired of myself, tired of all things,
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.
With, in, and through.

Simplify, eradicate demands, density scarce, tension released,
Distractions arrayed within a lessening, pulverizing angst,
Lowering expectations, increasing attention,
Peace infused, muttering fewer incantations,
Muzzling ranting prayers, quiet, and quieter still,
Scrupulosity identified, surrendering self-immersed confrontations,
Pleasure and sweetness no longer pursuing religious perversity,
Needing not to be the center of conversation, needing not clever recanting,
Needing not mental victories, needing not rationalizations, needing not romantic fantasies, needing not the lunatic fringe,
Grounded and real; natural—smooth and easy within the warring,
Suffering attacks of insecurity without consternation, genuine, aspiring to progress, reflecting ideas of purity,
Behavior and thought cleansed as a consequence, vivaciously surrounding life with honest gentle relationships,
Able to be generous, loving and sympathetic, lastingly building wholesome and true,
Detaching from harsh self-retribution, patient and kind onto one’s self, normal and sane,
Acceptance within love and compassion, knowing imperfections, standing in the center of humility,
Reducing acts of creative determination, debasing the self-dramatic debutant, smashing the stirrings of angry singularity,
Knowing artistically rarer occasions of individual humiliation, infrequently imagining a multitude of wrathful retributions,
Preserving in order to maintain deeper Divine intimacy, gracefully relieved from the burden of self, sustaining,
Opened wide and heavenly sound, grateful and dumb during worshipping, softly singing harmoniously,
Curtailing the noisy winds of self-dismay, asking not too much, despair and resolve petering out into diminutive waves, drifting, aimless and free,
Merging within concepts of forgotten readings, elapsed learning settling unconsciously within memories of sorrow, slight accumulation within the expanding,
The humanity of Abbot Lehody flowering into an exquisite example, profoundly consecrated and cloistered,
Refusing the need of reducing that which grasps onto the finest imitation,
Allowing proper self-loathing to latch on into the lightness of being,
Prayer of quietude without meditations nor elucidations,
Eliminating youthful desperate clinging, adolescent worldly ambitions hiding within spiritual aspirations,
Enough is enough, pride led before growing up, a baby weaning upon milk,
Not even regret lingers within the loitering on into nothingness, acknowledgment unaware, a psyche change, different ways,
Rooted natural, smooth, and easy within the warring, the battle churns on, fortitude and perseverance,
Everything is the same within the changing, transformation through the years, memories and a life, growing old,
Get back to where you once belonged,
Abiding within the Church.
Jesus, Joseph and Mary.
All you saints and angels pray for us.