Sabbath Poem (Mahler 3)
October 7, 2007
Last night I saw Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 for the second time this year! This time it was the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez, at NYC’s own Carnegie Hall. This was only my second time there! and we sat in ‘limited legroom’ seats in the balcony, with wonderful sounds of 120 orchestra players, plus 30 women and 30 boy singers reverberating off the ceiling.
The first time I heard Mahler 3 was on July 14th at Tanglewood, MA with the James Levine conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. During the intermission between the first movement and the last five… I got engaged! Yup, George asked me to marry him on the hillside above Ozawa Hall. So this piece has permanent special significance to me…. especially the 6th movement, “What love tells me”.
I was struck again by the text for the 4th and 5th movements again last night and wanted to share them as my Sabbath Poems for this week. Enjoy!
IV. “What Man Tells Me”
Text: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Translation: Larry Rothe
O Mensch! Gib Acht!
Oh man, take heed!
What does deep midnight say?
I slept!
I have woken from a deep dream!
The world is deep—
Deeper than the day had thought!
Deep is the pain!
Joy deeper still than heart’s sorrow!
Pain says: Vanish!
Yet all joy aspires to eternity,
To deep, deep eternity.
V. “What the Angels Tell Me”
Text: from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Translation: Larry Rothe
Three angels sang a sweet song.
It resounded throughout heaven;
They also rejoiced
That Peter was free of sin.For as the Lord Jesus sat down at the table
And ate the evening meal with his twelve disciples,
The Lord Jesus said, “Why are you standing here?
When I look at you, you cry.”“And shouldn’t I cry, you kind God?”
You shouldn’t cry!
“I have broken the Ten Commandments;
I go and cry bitterly.”
You shouldn’t cry!
“Oh come, and have mercy on me!”“If you’ve broken the Ten Commandments,
Fall on your knees and pray to God.
Just love God always,
And you will have heavenly joy.”Heavenly joy is a blessed city,
Heavenly joy, which has no end;
Heavenly joy was prepared for Peter
By Jesus, and for everyone’s salvation.
Translation copyright © 2003 by the San Francisco Symphony
Aug 15th for Jesus’ Mama
August 14, 2007
Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth - Tapesetry, originally uploaded by Edith OSB.
It’s the middle of August, so we’re keeping it low-key and simple. Come join us on the funky benches behind Grant’s Tomb for a bag dinner picnic and Bible Study.
Since August 15th just happens to be the Feast of Saint Mary, Mother of Jesus for Anglicans and Lutherans, the Assumption for Roman Catholics, and the Dormition of the Theotokos for the Eastern Orthodox, so we’ll be celebrating Jesus’ Ma Protestant-style, with a Bible Study! (No previous knowledge about Madonna necessary!)
About ‘African Bible Study’
Luke 1:39-56 - King James Version - The Message - NIV
GRANT’S TOMB is at 122nd and Riverside Drive. The 1 train stops at 116th on Broadway. Walk 6 blocks north, and 2 blocks west. Call 646 245-7346 if you can’t find us.
FOOD To keep this mid-August meeting simple, we’re asking people to bring food for themselves, plus a little extra to share (e.g. some chips, cookies, drinks, salad, small dish, an extra sandwich). Hopefully, there will be enough extra for those of you who don’t have time or extra cash to pick something up.
If you can, please bring a MARY piece to share –
A cappella or acoustic versions of the Magnificat welcome!
A visual representation of Mary (e.g. image, statue, jewelry) for “show & tell”
If you speak another language, bring a translation of Luke 1:39-56 to read to the group
Isaac & the “musicianhood of all believers”
August 7, 2007
There’s a great interview with Isaac by Becky Garrison on emergingchurch.info.
Definitely worth checking out…
I like his bit about a “musicianhood of all believers”
Martin Luther talked about the “priesthood of all believers” and the broad, folky appeal of his hymns suggest that he believed in the “musicianhood of all believers” as well. The job of professional ministers and musicians should not be to direct liturgical and musical activity, but rather to facilitate them. A liturgical leader’s job is not merely to pray and to worship, but to get the entire congregation praying and worshiping. Similarly, my job is not just to play well, but also to get everyone in the room participating in the music; my job is to help everyone find an entry point into the ritual activity.
Sabbath Poem (Pablo Neruda)
July 27, 2007
Butterfly Feet, originally uploaded by estelucy.
To the Foot from its Child
by Pablo Neruda; translated by Alastair Reid
The child’s foot is not yet aware it’s a foot,
and would like to be a butterfly or an apple.
But in time, stones and bits of glass,
streets, ladders,
and the paths in the rough earth
go on teaching the foot that it cannot fly,
cannot be a fruit bulging on the branch.
Then, the child’s foot
is defeated, falls
in the battle,
is a prisoner
condemned to live in a shoe.
Bit by bit, in that dark,
it grows to know the world in its own way,
out of touch with its fellow, enclosed,
feeling out life like a blind man.
These soft nails
of quartz, bunched together,
grow hard, and change themselves
into opaque substance, hard as horn,
and the tiny, petalled toes of the child
grow bunched and out of trim,
take on the form of eyeless reptiles
with triangular heads, like worms.
Later, they grow calloused
and are covered
with the faint volcanoes of death,
a coarsening hard to accept.
But this blind thing walks
without respite, never stopping
for hour after hour,
the one foot, the other,
now the man’s,
now the woman’s,
up above,
down below,
through fields, mines,
markets and ministries,
backwards,
far afield, inward,
forward,
this foot toils in its shoe,
scarcely taking time
to bare itself in love or sleep;
it walks, they walk,
until the whole man chooses to stop.
And then it descended
underground, unaware,
for there, everything, everything was dark.
It never knew it had ceased to be a foot
or if they were burying it so that it could fly
or so that it could become
an apple.
* One of my favorite poems in high school, from a volume I had (with Spanish on one side and English on the other) called A New Decade (Poems 1958-1967)
buy or borrow Kester Brewin’s new book
July 23, 2007
signs of Emergence:
A Vision for Church That Is Organic / Networked / Decentralized / Bottom-up / Communal / Flexible
{Always Evolving}
I’m just about to start Part 2, but wanted to share some snippets from the first 100+ pages while they’re freshly percolating in my imagination…
With our eyes suckling from cathode-ray nipples feeding us a skimmed diet of soap opera and home improvements, we have lost the ability and mental space to simply talk and share thoughts and receive wisdom… Part of the prophetic role of the Emergent Church will be to encourage society to recover its memory and have a healthy balance between past, present, and future:
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again. (108)Our problem today: the space for imagination to expand and take shape is inversely proportional to the speed at which we live. Yet if we stop and wait, and close our eyes to the “buy now, take me now” images, and rest our weary retinas, we will begin to remember, new worlds will form, new exits will become apparent. (57)
Christ’s incarnation in a specific time and a specific place demands of us, the body of Christ, that we too undergo incarnation and are born somewhere specific, committing to it and putting roots down. We cannot be reborn in first-century Palestine; we need to be incarnate to the place where we are and the place that needs us most. We must learn how to incarnate the church in the city. (73)
This is the extraordinarily consistent truth about our cities, our brains, our ecosystems, and, I am suggesting, our churches: somewhere between these two poles of anarchy and rigidity - a spectrum with death at each end - there exists a place where a system begins to live, to self-organize, to become more than a sum of its parts, to develop a character, a culture, a soul, if you will- as if some breath has entered it and commanded it to live. (82)
stitch-by-stitch snippets of internet inspiration
July 9, 2007
new membership, originally uploaded by Princess Valium.
If a ritual is performed more than once, it becomes “official,” or there is a greater sense of permanency, just as the more stitches you use to fasten a button to a shirt, the more tightly it will stay attached.
May we, a little band of love,
We sinners, saved by grace,
From glory unto glory changed,
Behold thee face to face.
from Hymns for the Circle #12 , collected writings that came out of a sewing circle
Her project in the hotel lobby consists of the screening of two video’s and a ‘sewing circle’. The public will be invited to join the making of semi high fashion items for which all materials will be provided. The sewing circle blurs the boundary between public and private space. Historically a very private, exclusively female ritual, the sewing circle as ‘performance’ in a public space addresses an entirely new set of questions and interpersonal connections. Tracey Prehay thus contributes to a complex debate on cultural encounters, the market place and the notion of mimicry.
Scripture on Sewing, Pride & Prejudice
July 6, 2007
Here are some Bible passages I found and may use in our Stitch-by-Stitch Circle. How do they resonate with you? Are there others you can think of? Please comment below!
Some Sewing Quotes
on PRIDE– Genesis 3
* Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (Gen 3:7)
* The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. (Gen 3:21)
on PREJUDICE – Matthew 9:14-17
* No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. (Mt 9:16 )
Stitch Circle Quotes
on colored YARN – Exodus 28 (it’s worth reading!)
* Make pomegranates of blue, purple and scarlet yarn around the hem of the robe, with gold bells between them. (Ex 28:33)
on a CIRCLE – Mark 3:31-35
* Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! (Mk 3:34)
Pride in Widsom Literature
* When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. (Prov 11:2)
* Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice. (Prov 13:10)
* Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. (Prov 16:18)
in a PSALM – Psalsm 10 (see more below)
* The wicked are so proud that they care not for God; their only thought is, “God does not matter.” (Ps 10:4 )
Stitch-by-Stitch Circle July 18
July 5, 2007
Come to a Transmission Stitch Circle!
Bring yourself and something that needs mending, sewing, knitting, eating or, drinking.
We’ll be hanging out and practicing the slow art of conversation…
Topics for the evening are Pride and Prejudice
last week, for the 4th of July, we discussed Patriotism and Pacifism - so I thought this week we’d continue with the double-Ps and take inspiration from Jane Austen - herself a priest’s kid
Snacks and drinks welcome!
July 18th at 7pm
rsvp epiphany.ny@gmail.com for directions
stitching assistance will be available
Sewing Circle, originally uploaded by stagewhisper.
Sabbath Poem (Bozarth)
July 5, 2007
The small plot of ground
by Alla Renee Bozarth
The small plot of ground
on which you were born
cannot be expected
to stay forever
the same.
Earth changes,
and home becomes different
places.
You took flesh
from clay
but the clay
did not come
from just one place.
To feel alive,
important, and safe,
know your own waters
and hills, but know
more
You have stars in your bones
and oceans
in blood.
You have opposing
terrain in each eye
you belong to the land
and sky of your first cry,
you belong to infinity.
* from Earth Prayers, Edited by Elizabeth Roberts
* We had this book when I was growing up and I read this poem at a DEC hearing in Farmersville, New York (40 miles from where I grew up) regarding the proposed largest landfill in the Northeast. That hearing happened in March 1994. The has fight continued for more than ten years and now the dump is all but defeated!
* I saw this poem quoted today and googled the author, only to realize that she is an Episcopal priest who was part of the Philadelphia Eleven, the first crop of women “irregularly” ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1974, inlcuding Carter Hayard and Jeanette Piccard, whom we discussed at Transmission last night.
Creation Poem (Snake)
June 28, 2007
by Bowie Snodgrass
Featuring Genesis 2:24 and 3:24, JPS trans
ah my
yes
the fine art
of creation
let it be so bountiful!
into dry dust, breathe breath
god made the food garden
a river with four branches
and declared that from
hence, a man leaves his father
and mother and clings to his wife
so that they become one flesh
the mother of all the living
listened for good and evil
ate apple after serpent
and caused the couple
to be expelled outside Eden where
the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning
sword wait to guard the way to the tree of life