LENTEN REFLECTIONS

Week 1
The Gift
by Mary Oliver

by Mary Oliver
I wanted to thank the mockingbird for the vigor of his song.
Every day he sang from the rim of the field,
while I picked blueberries or just idled in the sun.
Every day he came fluttering by to show me, and why not,
the white blossoms in this wings.
So one day I went there with a machine,
and played some songs of Mahler.
The mocking bird stopped singing,
he came close and seemed to listen.
Now when I go down to the field,
a little Mahler spills through the sputters of his song.
How happy I am lounging in the light, Listening as the music floats by!
And I give thanks also for my mind, that thought of giving a gift.
And mostly I’m grateful that I take this world so seriously.

Week 2
The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean the one who has flung herself
out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts up her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Week 3
by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak

Week 4
by Rainer Maria Rilke

I am praying again, Awesome One.
You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.

I’ve been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.

In alleyways I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you…
It’s here in the pieces of my shame
that I now find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held in the great hands of your heart —
Oh let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God — spend them however you want.

Week 5
by Oscar Romero

The guarantee of one’s prayer
I not in saying a lot of words.
The guarantee of one’ prayer is very easy to know:
How do I treat the poor? — because that is where God is.
The degree to which you approach them, and
the love with which you approach them,
or the scorn with which
you approach them —
That is how you approach your God.
What you do to them, you do to God.
The way you look at them is the way you look at God.

Week 6
Behind the Monastery
by Ernesto Cardenal

Behind the monastery,
down by the road
There is a cemetery of worn-out things
Where lie smashed china, rusty metal
Cracked pipes and twisted bits of wire,
empty cigarette packs, sawdust,
corrugated iron, old plastic, tires beyond repair;
all waiting for the Resurrection,
like ourselves.

www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/prayer-cycle.html