Happy Birthday Blessed Mother/And in Her Morning

Photo from Roses for Our Lady's Mass in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, 2013

I'm so excited about the Blessed Mother's birthday this year!  Roses for Our Lady will be celebrating in a big way with a Mass and outdoor Eucharistic Rosary Procession by candlelight at Divine Mercy Parish in South Milwaukee.  Mass with Bishop Donald Hying, Fr. Bob Betz, Fr. Joseph Sebastian, Fr. Tim Kitzke and Fr. Luke Strand is at 7 pm.   The beautiful and talented Grace Urbanski, who works and writes for the Apostleship of Prayer, (listen to Grace sing the Ave Maria here), and the St. Stanislaus Schola, will provide the music.  Then we'll have a Eucharistic procession by candlelight while praying the rosary in the lovely Divine Mercy neighborhood.  The weather forecast looks perfect!  And we'll finish off the celebration with a birthday party complete with cake and punch.  For more details, visit this link.

One of my favorite poets, Jessica Powers, aka Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit, wrote a beautiful and moving poem about our Mother, and in honor of her September 8th birthday, as my own gift to her, I invite you to pray with it here.

And in Her Morning by Jessica Powers
from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers

The Virgin Mary cannot enter into
my soul for an indwelling.  God alone
has sealed this land as secretly as His own;
but being mother and implored, she comes
to stand along my eastern sky and be
a drift of sunrise over God and me.

God is a light and genitor of light.
Yet for our weakness and our punishment
He hides Himself in midnights that prevent
all save the least awareness of Him.
We strain with dimmed eyes inward and perceive
no stir of what we clamored to believe.
Yet I say:  God (if one may jest with God),
Your hiding has not reckoned with Our Lady
who holds my east horizon and whose glow
lights up my inner landscape, high and low.
All my soul's acres shine and shine with her!
You are discovered, God; awake, rise
out of the dark of Your Divine surprise!
Your own reflection has revealed Your place,
for she is utter light by Your own grace.
And in her light I find You hid within me,
and in her morning I can see Your Face.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLESSED MOTHER MARY!

St. Mary Magdalene

The feast of St. Mary Magdalene is one of my favorites.  I've always wanted to model my life after this beautiful and holy woman; that is, I want to love much.  I recently learned that during the course of the last seventy years, it was realized that the seven demons that Jesus cast out from St. Mary Magdalene was actually referring to His curing her depression and anxiety, not the prostitution that is usually attributed to her. As one who has deeply struggled with those same mental illnesses, the knowledge that we have this commonality makes me love her even more.

Here's a treat from my favorite local poet, Jessica Powers, aka Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD, in honor of this special Feast Day:

God is a Strange Lover

God is the strangest of all lovers;

His ways are past explaining.

He sets His heart on a soul:  He says to Himself, “Here will I rest my love.”

But he does not woo her with flowers or jewels or words that are set to music,

No names endearing, no kindled praise His heart, direction prove.

His jealousy is an infinite thing, He stalks the soul with sorrow;

He tramples the bloom; He blots the sun that could make her vision dim.

He robs and breaks and destroys-there is nothing at last but her own shame, her own affliction,

And then He comes and there is nothing in the vast world but Him and her love of Him.

Not till the great rebellions die and her will is safe in His hands forever

Does He open the door of light and His tenderness fall,

And then for what is seen in the soul’s virgin places,

For what is heard in the heart, there is no speech at all.

God is a strange lover; the story of His love is most surprising,

There is no proud queen in her cloth of gold; over and over again.

There is only, deep in the soul, a poor dishelved woman weeping….

For those who have need of a picture and words:  the Magdalen.

And something I've shared before from Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, sP, the founder of the Handmaids of the Precious Blood, and my spiritual father:

To Saint Mary Magdalene

You claimed
the false
until you found
the True;
your beauty
wounded
until Beauty
wounded you,
and plunged your soul
into a spring so sweet
your tears
fell as chaste pearls
at Mercy's
feet.

More on Jessica Powers

Jessica Power's gravestone in the dark
 (Can you read it? Try clicking on
it to see it better)

Have you ever done something entirely foolish and impulsive on a whim?  I admit that I have, more than once.  In fact, just this past Tuesday, I was drawn to hunt down the burial site of Jessica Powers after I wrote about her here on this blog.  I was determined to pay immediate homage to her and could not wait for a sunny afternoon to scout out her burial place.

So after I picked up my daughter, Mary,  from her volleyball practice, we raced across town to Holy Cross Cemetery hoping to find the gravestone of Jessica Powers before nightfall.  Holy Cross Cemetery is quite large and even though we had directions from the cemetery office, we were just about to give up the hunt, feeling that it was a hopeless venture, as the dark night was quickly overtaking us.  We were beginning to feel just a bit more than deliciously frightened to be in the cemetery after dark and decided that the sane thing to do would be to give up the search and come back on a brighter day, when I stumbled across the humble plot of the Carmelite nun, which, considering the fact that she was a lover of nature, was fittingly beside a lovely pond where ducks quietly floated under the branches of a weeping willow tree.  "Here it is!" I shouted with joy, startling my daughter who was keeping up a brave appearance despite the desolate surroundings.  Together we offered a prayer for the soul of the long-gone woman and then I recited my favorite poem of hers, The Valley of the Cat-tails.  Mary quickly took a picture of the small headstone and we raced back to the car and headed home.

The next day I was inspired to write a poem of my own to ingrain that paparazzi-like moment in my mind forever.  When I read it to my children, Joe asked me how long I spent writing it and I responded that I worked on it for all of ten minutes.  "I could tell," replied Joe.

I offer my quickly transcribed poem here for your amusement, followed by Jessica Powers' The Valley of the Cat-tails.  You will see that I have a long way to go before anyone will be searching through a cemetery in the dark looking for my gravestone in an effort to honor me!

Poet by the Pond:  by Me

As early evening shades of gloom

cast themselves over every tomb

two brave women came walking

In search of one whose fame was known

for poetry of God's love that shone

in hearts that now were stalking

And when at last through careful comb

they found her everlasting home

they rejoiced with shouts and talking

After quiet prayer and recitation of poem

from melancholy yet small-sized tome

the task was now completed

The camera clicked in evening dark

and women ran to leave the park

for the van was warmly heated

They left the grave beside the pond

trusting that Sr. Miriam was beyond

this earth she long had fleeted

The Valley of the Cat-tails (from The Lantern Burns)

My valley is a woman unconsoled.
Her bluffs are amethyst, the tinge of grief;
Her tamarack swamps are sad.
There is no dark tale that she was not told;
There is no sorrow that she has not had.
She has no mood of mirth, however brief.

Too long I praised her dolors in the words
Of the dark pines, her trees.
And the whippoorwills, her sacred birds.
Her tragedy is more intense than these.

The reeds that lift from every marsh and pond
More plainly speak her spirit's poverty.
Here should the waters dance, or flowers be.

Her reeds are proper symbols of a mother
Who from the primer of her own dark fears,
As if the caroling earth possessed no other,
Teaches her young the alphabet of tears.

Jessica Powers

Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit

Not too long ago, Magnifacat Magazine published a beautiful poem by Jessica Powers, a name that was completely unknown to me.  I lingered over the final words of that poem, The Garments of God, which read:

"here in the dark I clutch the garments of God."

And I clutched those words throughout the day, pondering about who the author of such wonder could be.  I didn't have to think on it for long, as within a day I found a blog post by Easter from Hawaii, and learned that she, too, was enamored by the poem penned by that unknown poetess.  But Easter did more than I did, she began to search in an effort to learn more about Jessica Powers and she found this wonderful website with a wealth of information about Jessica Powers, who spent most of her life as Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, a Carmelite nun living at the Carmel of the Mother of God in Pewaukee, Wisconsin.  I had the honor of praying at that very same convent  with my niece several years ago and had no idea that I was in the earthly home of so great a poet.  I wrote about that prayer experience here and after re-reading that post I'm going to have to make an effort to get back out to that convent for some one-on-one time with the Lord, and this time I will be praying for the intercession of a saintly poet!

After learning that Jessica Powers was the author of several volumes of poetry, I quickly put in a request at my favorite library, St. Francis de Sales Seminary's Salzmann Library, and was soon holding every book by or about this wonderful poet within my hands.  Jessica Powers was a close friend to Green Bay's Auxiliary Bishop Robert Morneau and several of her books of poetry were collected and edited by this local holy man.  You can read an article of his about her here.

One of the things that impresses me the most about Jessica Powers is that she has a great love for nature, specifically the wilds of Wisconsin.  I brought several of her poetry editions along with me when my family and I took a recent camping vacation to Devil's Lake State Park just south of her hometown of Mauston.  While sitting around the campfire, my husband suggested that we have a poetry reading, with my children, and he and I each taking a turn reading one of her poems aloud.  After each reading, everyone snapped their fingers, which is apparently the hip thing to do to show appreciation for the poem instead of clapping.  I was just so happy to introduce spiritual poetry to my family as willing participants that although I would have preferred silence in lieu of the snapping, I went along with the game anyway and found that it was most enjoyable.  If the Spirit inspires you, feel free to snap your fingers after reading the following poems by Jessica Powers, or simply absorb them in silence.

Doves (from:  The Lantern Burns)

A dove in the air,
A dove in the sea,
And a dove in your glance
When you look at me.

Feather of dusk,
Wings in the grain,
And a crumpled bird
In the wake of pain.

Everywhere doves
With their drifting wings;
In a dream, in a song
That a poet sings;

In the touch of death,
In the kiss of love,
And God Himself
As a snow-white dove.

The Seventh Station (from:  The Place of Splendor)

The corner is dark and nobody sees this station.
He falls again, and the picture has nothing new.
The air is musty, crowded under the choir loft,
And people pass with a hurried glance or two.

I think that it must have been true in ancient Juda
As it is true on this shaded chapel wall
That He Whose love had rooted itself in suffering
Would find the most uncomforting place to fall.

Take Your Only Son  (from:  The House at Rest)

None guessed our nearness to the land of vision,
not even our two companions to the mount.
That you bore wood and I, by grave decision,
fire and sword, they judged of small account.

Speech might leap wide to what were best unspoken
and so we plodded, silent, through the dust.
I turned my gaze lest the heart be twice broken
when innocence looked up to smile its trust.

O love far deeper than a lone begotten,
how grievingly I let your words be lost
when a shy question guessed I had forgotten
a thing so vital as the holocaust.

Hope may shout promise of reward unending
and faith buy bells to ring its gladness thrice,
but these do not preclude earth's tragic ending
and the heart shattered in its sacrifice.

Not beside Abram does my story set me.
I built the altar, laid the wood for flame.
I stayed my sword as long as duty let me,
and then alas, alas, no angel came.