Some say this world of trouble
Is the only one we need
But I’m waiting for that morning
When the new world is revealed.
Oh, when the saints go marching in,
When the saints go marching in,
Oh Lord, I want to be in that number,
When the saints go marching in!
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| Wheel of Fortune with scenes from the life of Saint Theophilus the Penitent. |
Midweek Motif ~ Saints
Today, our minds may be on saints (All Saints Day), our dearly departed (Day of the Dead), or living persons we venerate, or not. Who is (or was) a saintly presence to you? How does the idea of sainthood enter your life?
Your Challenge: In a new poem, narrate an encounter with a saint.
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| Rabindranath Tagore and Gandhi in 1940. |
When no one else would listen, Saint Anthony
preached seaward, his words fishnet for the lost
souls of the heretics. Caught up in despair, we plea
to the one who will listen: Saint Anthony,
please return TÃa’s teeth or the misplaced key
to our bolted hopes. Patron retriever of all we’ve tossed
when no one else would. Listen, Saint Anthony,
teach us to steward this world, all our netted loss.
(Used by permission.)
When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped
away.
Banished from heaven, I found this victim
beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping
my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without
hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms.
St. Francis and the Sow, Mollie Hosmer-Dillard (2012)
(Used with Permission)
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(Used with Permission)
👼
excerpt from Saint Francis and the Sow
. . . .
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
The Singing Girl
by Joyce Kilmer (For the Rev. Edward F. Garesche, S.J.)There was a little maiden In blue and silver drest, She sang to God in Heaven And God within her breast. It flooded me with pleasure, It pierced me like a sword, When this young maiden sang: "My soul Doth magnify the Lord." The stars sing all together And hear the angels sing, But they said they had never heard So beautiful a thing. Saint Mary and Saint Joseph, And Saint Elizabeth, Pray for us poets now And at the hour of death.👼Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~ Silence.
