Novena of Grace

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 2011 Novena of Grace, a preached Lenten retreat sponsored by my mom and featuring my dad. If you cannot attend the actual novena, you can pray it at home and listen to the talks that are uploaded on the Ignatian Spirituality Center website. I'm planning on making all of the days (missing the last day as I will be out of town). It's a simple commitment that deepens the experience of moving into Lent, and focuses me on God. Plus, I get to see my folks doing their thing. Win win win. Also, repent repent repent!

It's Lent

"Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep." Romans 13:11

"...don't waste time looking for an easier world ..."

Dogfish by Mary Oliver

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?

Salish Dogfish print by Randy Stiglitz

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.



It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don't know what they were,
huddled in the highest ripples
as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.



Also I wanted
to be able to love. And we all know
how that one goes,
don't we?

Slowly



the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.



You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story---
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.



And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.



And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

mini post

It's my week for a supplementary post on The Other Journal.

Check me out:
http://theotherjournal.com/mediation/2011/03/03/mini-mediation-wild-sheen/