Epiphany

Adoration of the Magi Tapestry
Designed by Edward Burne Jones with details by William Morris and John Henry Dearle 

Mysteries seeking the Mystery, 

Following the light but leaving none.
Asking the customary quintet of questions,
But answering none.
Bequeathing us no gift
To illuminate their identity.
We see only their shadows in the light of the Star.

Emissaries to the newborn King
From the myriad banished nations,
Forging a path to the Kingdom
For all of us who lost the way to Eden.

And what each seeker saw is veiled in silence,
Known perhaps not even to himself.
For even in that heavenly illumination
Shadows linger in the corners
To shroud the hidden meaning of the night.
                                                            JTC

AMDG

Looking Backward~and Forward

I got home later than I expected and that gives me a perfect excuse to wait until tomorrow to write more about the Armadio, which is okay because this is what I really want to post tonight. This is a post from two years ago, and I decided I would just add to it instead of writing a new one on the same topic.

Early this morning the moon was full, which is how we know it's going to be Easter on Sunday, since it's the first full moon since the Spring equinox. My granddaughter took the picture below on Holy Thursday in 2012, on the way home from Mass, and it may have actually been a day early, but close enough. After this, I decided I would take a picture of this full moon every year.

The first full moon after the Vernal Equinox--2012

Ecclesiastical Full Moon

Paschal Full Moon

I took this next one in the early morning hours of Holy Thursday in 2013. It was March 28, and I was on a private retreat in French Camp Mississippi. 

The difference in size has more to do with the fact that I didn't enlarge this one than anything else.

I was excited about taking the picture for the third year, especially because the eclipse was going to make the moon look blood red, but alas, it was completely overcast here. We set the alarm for the middle of the night and my husband got up and looked, but no luck. When I got up a little after four this morning, however, I noticed light coming in the window, and sure enough, most of the clouds were gone,

It was cold last year on March 28, but nowhere near as cold as it was this morning on April 15.  I like this picture pretty well, but my granddaughter completely outdid me. Of course, she has a great camera and was in Arizona where the skies were clear.

And then, she's a much better photographer.

And then there's my Paschal Moon poem.

Computus

How to discern the Sunday on which falls

The feast on which our Saviour rose to life?

An ancient quandary leads us yet to strife

And disagreement unity forestalls.

The full moon past spring day when sun has crossed

The line that separates the south from north

Now causes separation to go forth

‘Til East and West the common feast have lost.

Which Moon is that Ecclesiastical?

Now Rome will look to Gregory to learn

The answer while the Orthodox will turn

To Julius to discern when this Moon’s full.

The Moon herself oblivious to blame

Reveals her face and does not feel the shame.

JTC

Photo credit: My granddaughter, Tessa Love, took the top picture from a moving car on the way home from church, and the bottom picture, also.

Ash Wednesday

Sally posted this one on her blog last year, but I thought this time I'd save it for myself.

ASH WEDNESDAY

Shuffling forward to be marked anew,
Dry as dust, I do not have to wait
Or feel the ash to know my ashen state.
I know full well the earth that is my due.
Forty days and more a cross to hew
To follow after Him and imitate
That sacrifice that saves me from my fate.
O, give me patience to await the dew.

Here within the hush that fills this place
Along with hundreds more all marked the same
A thousand faces smudged with black design,
A thousand souls now resting in this grace,
And now a greater grace calls forth the lame
To stumble forward once more, now to dine.

JTC

A Few Things

O Adonai
O Lord of Lords
And Leader of the house of Israel,
Who appeared to Moses in the bush's    flaming fire
And gave to him the Law on Sinai --
Come to redeem us with outstretched arms.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A Dream

I dreamt of a cat,
   A moon-colored cat,
      That ran through the fields.

It ran down the path
   Through the tall, tawny grass
And the cat had a boy that was almost a man
   And the boy had coat,
       A coat that was blue like the Prince with the fox.

And they ran down the path through the tall, tawny grass,
   The path to my grandmother's yard
      Where the peonies grew,
         White with a touch of blood at their hearts,
             Smelling like the Holy Ghost,
                Waiting to be picked to grace
                   The altar of the Mother of God.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

While I was writing my post yesterday, I was thinking about a happier Advent, and that was the year that my son, my only son, Michael, was born on December 16. I can remember walking around the house singing, "For unto us a son it born ...," and being filled with delight. Another Advent, about four or five years later, Michael was walking around the house singing the Messiah, too. He had mistaken some of the words and instead of singing, "Every valley shall be exalted," he was singing, "Everybody will be exhausted."  I guess he was hearing what he was experiencing. I still think he's pretty delightful.

AMDG

Falling Silent

And now comes the best season

   Not yet the brilliant leaves,

      The pumpkin and the cranberries,

         The fragrance and the crackling underfoot.

No. This is the hour of silence.

   The muffled whispers and the white stillness

      The hazy rivers and the haunted shadows

         Now is the season of the mist

Drifting along the surface of the ponds,

   Rising in a curtain across the fields

      Revealing hidden streams

Unfamiliar phantoms fill the farmyards.

   Fog swirls and thickens.

        The traveler, lost a mile from home,

            Finds himself forsaken in an unknown world.

And the swamp, mysterious on the most prosaic days,

   Yields herself to the enchantment,

      Waits as the ghostly wisps weave themselves through her branches,

         Now concealing, now revealing

            Her deepest secrets.

Further along the road, a tree-encircled field

   Becomes a giant bowl that fills with clouds

      that rise

         and build

              and spill

Like smoking incense from a thurible

   Pouring a last cool benediction across the road

      Before the sun’s heat burns the mystery from the day.

AMDG

The Ritual

I lay in bed and watched my cousin dress for school.
I was ten and she was two years older.
She was the piper for whom I had danced all my life.
When she was small and I was smaller, I sat on a step
And let her turn a key in my back ‘til I bled--
A sort of stigmata that showed the depth of my love for her.

The floor of her closet was a doll’s house
Filled with rooms of miniature furniture
Where we spent our days playing out doll-sized dramas,
The tops of our heads brushing against the hems of her dresses.

In the summers, we played hide-and-seek,
Or statues in my grandparents’ yard.
We played running games in the driveway,
And when we were tired we rested on the porch.
We sat on the wrought iron furniture and sang,
Or sat on the rise into which the garage was built and rested our backs
Against the brick wall with our heads just below the eaves,
And planned vacations that might have happened.

And then that day I lay in bed and watched her dress for school.
I knew it was some sort of ritual.
She put on a dress that was pretty and perfectly pressed
That looked like the dresses that mothers wore on TV.
She smoothed her hair to the back of her head into a neat French Roll
That looked like the hairdo our dolls had worn in the closet.
She slipped into her stockings.
She slipped into her loafers, which were perfect--
Gleaming cordovan loafers with a penny in the slot.
I knew it was some sort of ritual,
But I didn’t know it was the ritual for going away forever.

Later, one day in the car with my mother and grandmother in the front seat
And I in the back,
I said, “I hope that soon Lynn will want to play with me again.”
And my mother said, “I don’t think that will happen.”

AMDG