Amazing Grace
Debbie Williams, flute

Music for Lent Video 1 (YouTube link)

Nocturne (Alexander Tcherepnin, 1899-1977)
Linda & Jonathan Glover, French Horns

Music for Lent Video 1 (YouTube link)

Desert 

by Ruth Burgess

The desert waits,

ready for those who come

who come obedient to the Spirit’s leading;

or who are driven,

because they will not come any other way.

The desert always waits

ready to let us know who we are –

the place of self-discovery.

And whilst we fear, and rightly,

the loneliness and emptiness and harshness

we forget the angels,

whom we cannot see for our blindness,        

but who come when God decides

that we need their help;

when we are ready

for what they can give us.

~ from Bread of Tomorrow

Epistle Sonata No 1. in Eb Major (W. A. Mozart, 1756-1791)
Used by permission from St. James Music Press, License #2125

Video: Music for Lent, Week 2 (Youtube Link)

Sabbath

by Christine Valters Paintner

Even as the subway car hurtles  
into the tunnel and calendars heave  
under growing weight of entries, 
even under the familiar lament 
for more hours to do 
 
a bell rings somewhere 
and a man lays down  
his hammer, as if to say 
the world can build without me, 
a woman sets down  
her pen as if to say,  
the world will carry on 
without my words. 
 
The project left undone, 
dust on the shelves,  
dishes crusted with morning 
egg, the vase of drooping 
flowers, and so much work 
still to complete,  
 
I journey across the long field 
where trees cling to the edges 
free to not do anything but  
stand their ground, 
where buttercups 
and bluebells sway 
and in this taste of paradise 
where rest becomes luminous 
and play a prayer of gratitude, 
even the stones sing 
of a different time, 
where burden is lifted 
​and eternity endures.

Christine Valters Paintner, Ph.D, is a Benedictine oblate and an American poet and writer living in Galway, Ireland, where she leads pilgrimages and retreats.  

Sonata in F Major, Allemande (Jean Baptiste Loeillet, 1688-1720)
Used by permission from St. James Music Press, License #2125

The Sun Never Says

by Hafiz

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole Sky

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Fleeting Beauty

Mary Dympna

I picked daisies with tiny fingers,

strung them in a crown through my hair,

but their stems broke with the fury of play,

hung ragged from my locks,

petals tangling in the threads

as they fell I picked up their broken necks,

buried them where they were picked

and I learnt sometimes beautiful things break

Palm Sunday

by Malcolm Guite

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,

The seething holy city of my heart,

The Saviour comes. But will I welcome him?

Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;

They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,

And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find

The challenge, the reversal he is bringing

Changes their tune. I know what lies behind

The surface flourish that so quickly fades;

Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,

The hardness of the heart, its barricades,

And at the core, the dreadful emptiness

Of a perverted temple. Jesus, come

Break my resistance and make me your home.

Stuff Stuff stuuuuuufff!!!

Poetry

Stuff Stuff stuuuuuufff!!!

Poetry