Month: June 2021

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota by James Wright

The quiet and beauty are what we need to be able to heal. We are in existential dread with the sweltering heat, scared of a future of more climate change. I want to hear the cows on the hillside, and feel the air dancing the ginko leaves!

Heart Poems

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

Lying in a Hammock

When I first read Wright’s poem, enticed by the title, I came to the end and broke into smiles. I realize it may not strike you this way. Certainly that last line is an abrupt turn around from all the gorgeous pastoral images – butterfly, leaf, cowbells, sunlight, golden stones, a chicken hawk floats over. What does he mean?

I’m not going…

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The Divine Touch – A Sermon On Mark 5:21-43

This is a very beautiful meditation on the power of touch. It is a remedy for so much of the isolation we have been feeling!

Interrupting the Silence

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8, Year B – Mark 5:21-43

Photo byJackson DavidonUnsplash

I’m usually the one that drives when my wife, Cyndy, and I go somewhere. If we’re going further than a few blocks I almost always roll up the sleeve of my right arm, lay my hand in her lap, and say, “Would you rub my little arm please?”

On the one hand it just feels good and I like it. On the other hand it’s about so much more. I want to be touched. I want to be seen, recognized. I want to be reminded that I am real and that I matter. I want to feel connected to someone and something beyond myself.

“Would you rub my little arm?” She’s heard it a million times. I don’t think I am the only one that asks that. I think all of us, in…

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So last night I watched the movie “The Social Dilemma” and came to the conclusion which I reached 50 years ago, that we have to “solve one damn problem after another” trying to make the world a better place, rather than trying to make money. If you were wondering about how you can make a difference, in trying to stop Nestle and other big companies from privatizing the water supply of the whole world, leaving millions of people to die of thirst, here is an answer: Charity: Water. Every penny goes to helping bring clean drinking water to small villages all over the world. They have a separate business for generating the plans, engineering, and support system, so that every donated penny goes to getting the water to the people. You can give $5 a month, or more. It is easy to do. I watched their ad, the night I was watching Midnight mass from the Vatican, and they are a total inspiration. I wrote a poem about it. “WATER FROM THE SPOUT” Little faces lit with joy, as they put their whole heads under the spigot, and their hands, eagerly cupped to catch the clean sparkling water as it pours generously, dancingly, a ribbon of miracles, continuously from the pipe.
 Water (the Health Inspector says:) So the baby will not get dysentery, so the mother can wash the clothes, so the children can go to school, and not be thirsty, Or nauseated, or anemic, because of amoebas and worms, because of this new spigot, because of the gift of the well, drilled by someone who wanted to be of service, to make a real difference: A miracle in the desert. Water They have seen only mud holes, wet by opaque brown water, glaucous as a cataract, full of bugs, where animals have washed, and drunk after walking through the dust, toward the pond which seemed a mirage, there are footprints all around the slimy rim. Dancing down the road, these strong children carried on their heads big oil drums and plastic containers full of contaminated water, for miles, their feet dusty and hardened by walking on the earth with bare feet, singing and flashing their smiles, on their daily walk from the mud puddles, back to their homes. Water. They laugh, they sing, watching the clear, clean water splashing from the pipe. The well is in the middle of the village, women come with their baskets. full of clean washed clothes, children play in the open air, their voices full of excitement and joy, their hands clapping and touching, clean hands and clean faces, bright smiles of happiness, Water!