The Master Beggar by Jessica Powers

The tragedy in Haiti can leave us stunned, speechless, and inarticulate -- especially as we try to relate or mesh the glory of Christmas recently celebrated with such devastation. We find ways to help because there is where we are especially to bring Christ, and also where we find Him in a privileged way --- our God who reveals himself exhaustively in human flesh. Meanwhile, poets find ways to express the truths involved in this --- and the challenges of the Incarnation more generally. My prayer is that this awful event will trouble each and all of us for our human heart.

The Master Beggar

Worse than the poorest mendicant alive.
the pencil man, the blind man with his breath
of music shaming all who do not give,
are You to me, Jesus of Nazareth

Must you take up your post on every block
of every street? Do I have no release?
Is there no room of earth that I can lock
to Your sad face, Your pitiful whisper, "Please?"

I seek the counters of time's gleaming store
but make no purchases, for You are there.
How can I waste one coin while you implore
with tear-soiled cheeks and dark blood-matted hair?

And when I offer you in charity
pennies minted by love, still, still, You stand
fixing Your sorrowful wide eyes on me.
Must all my purse be emptied in Your hand?

Jesus, my beggar, what would You have of me?
Father and Mother? the lover I longed to know?
The child I would have cherished tenderly?
Even the blood that through my heart's valves flows?

I too would be a beggar. Long tormented,
I dream to grant You all and stand apart
with You on some bleak corner, tear-frequented,
and trouble mankind for its human heart.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit (Jessica Powers), 1937

Christ Is My Utmost Need, by Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit)

Late, late the mind confessed:
wisdom has not sufficed.
I cannot take one step into the light
without the Christ.

Late, late the heart affirmed:
wild do my heart-beats run
when in the blood-stream sings one wish away
from the Incarnate Son.

Christ is my utmost need.
I lift each breath, each beat for Him to bless,
knowing our language cannot overspeak
our frightening helplessness.

Here where proud morning walks
and we hang wreaths on power and self-command,
I cling with all my strength unto a nail-
investigated hand.

Christ is my only trust.
I am my fear since, down the lanes of ill,
my steps surprised a dark Iscariot
plotting in my own will.

Past nature called, I cry
who clutch at fingers and at tunic folds,
"Lay not on me, O Christ, this fastening.
Yours be the hand that holds.

(1952, 1984)

Solemnity of Saint Joseph: "To Live With the Spirit," by Jessica Powers

I used the blog space this was in to post a poem by Phyllis McGinley for St Patrick's day and am moving this here. It seems particularly appropriate to mark this Solemnity of St Joseph who did indeed quietly and unobtrusively listen to and live with the Holy Spirit, despite the risk and cost. (Icon by Nancy Oliphant)


To live with the Spirit of God is to be a listener.
It is to keep the vigil of mystery,
earthless and still.
One leans to catch the stirring of the Spirit,
strange as the wind's will.

The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows
turns like a wandering weather-vane toward love.
It may lament like Job or Jeremiah,
echo the wounded hart, the mateless dove.
It may rejoice in the spaciousness of meadow
that emulates the freedom of the sky.
Always it walks in waylessness, unknowing;
it has cast down forever from its hand
the compass of the whither and the why.

To live with the Spirit of God is to be a lover.
It is becoming love, and like to Him
toward whom we strain with metaphors of creatures:
fire-sweep and water-rush and the wind's whim.
The soul is all activity, all silence;
and though it surges Godward to its goal,
it holds, as moving earth holds sleeping noonday,
the peace that is the listening of the soul.

(1949;1984, Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD)

"This Trackless Solitude" by Jessica Powers

Perhaps on Valentine's day there are many poems of Jessica Powers which could be used to signal the love which is the hermit's and which calls to all of us, whatever our vocation, but I think the following one is lovely. Romantic love, wonderful as it is, is a shadow and sacrament of a love which is even deeper and summons us from within; in this poem Sister Miriam captures this beautifully.


Deep in the soul the acres lie
of virgin lands, of sacred wood
where waits the Spirit. Each soul bears
this trackless solitude.

The Voice invites, implores in vain
the fearful and the unaware;
but she who heeds and enters in
finds ultimate wisdom there.

The Spirit lights the way for her;
bramble and brush are pushed apart.
He lures her into wilderness
but to rejoice her heart.

Beneath the glistening foliage
the fruit of love hangs always near,
the one immortal fruit; He is
or, tasted: He is here.

Love leads and she surrenders to
His will, His waylessness of grace.
She speaks no word save His, nor moves
until He marks the place.

Hence all her paths are mystery,
passaging a Divine unknown.
Her only light is in the creed
that she is not alone.

The soul that wanders, Spirit led,
becomes, in His transforming shade,
the secret that she was, in God,
before the world was made.

(1984)

The Will of God, Jessica Powers

Time has one song alone. If you are heedful
and concentrate on the sound with all your soul,
you may hear the song of the beautiful will of God,
soft notes or deep sonorous tones that roll
like thunder over time.
Not many have hearing for this music,
and fewer still have sought it as sublime.

Listen, and tell your grief: But God is singing!
God sings through all creation with His will.
Save the negation of sin, all is His music,
even the notes that set their roots in ill
to flower in pity, pardon or sweet humbling.
Evil finds harshness of the rack and rod
in tunes where good finds tenderness and glory.

The saints who have loved have died of this pure music,
and no one enters heaven till he learns
deep in his soul at least, to sing with God.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit (Jessica Powers), 1951

For a Child of God

While on retreat, as I already noted, one of the topics we touched on was the enlarging of our hearts. It is a central Benedictine theme --- indeed a central theme of all good spirituality. If you have read my blog for some time you know that the dynamic and dialogical nature of the human heart (and of the soul, for that matter) is something that has intrigued me for some time. Our hearts are quite literally the place where God bears witness to himself. Heart is, in the NT (and I think the OT as well), a strictly theological term: it refers first of all to God's activity within us. As I have posted here before, it is not the case that we have a heart and that God comes to dwell there, but that that "place" within us where God dwells, speaks himself continually, calls us by Name and summons us to life and meaning, is called "heart."

If you are familiar with the sayings of the desert Fathers, you will know the story about the disciple who came to one of the Abbas saying he had kept the fast, been faithful to all the daily ascetic practices, prayed the psalms, etc but wondered what more he could do. Abba Moses raised his hands and moved his fingers back and forth, and as he did so he said, "If you would, you can become all flame!" It is a tremendous goal, and the very same thing as becoming authentically human and functioning as the heart of the church and world --- an image which resonates with monastics, and especially (from my perspective) for hermits. It also relates to the interpenetration of heaven and earth those of us who share in the life of the risen Christ know first hand.

Well, with these images and themes in mind, there were a couple of poems shared during retreat during Sister Donald's conferences; both had to do with the human heart and use the metaphor of flame. One of them, a poem by Jessica Powers (sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit) I would like to share now.

The saints and mystics
had a name
for that deep
inwardness of flame,
the height or depth
or ground or goal
Which is God's dwelling
in the soul.

Not capax dei
do you say;
nor yet
scintilla animae
nor syndereisis ---
all are fair ---
but heaven
because God is there.

All day and when
you wake at night
think of that place of living light,
yours and within you
and aglow
where only God
and you can go.

None can assail you
in that place
save your own evil,
routing grace.
Not even angels
see or hear,
nor the dark spirits
prowling near.

But there are days
when watching eyes
could guess that you
hold Paradise,
Sometimes the shining
overflows
and everyone
around you knows.

"For a Child of God" (1953)