Day 1 - THE SEASON OF WAITING

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Our Advent Series starts today -
it's getting "updated" with some fresh material
on a day by day basis.
Please go here:

http://maninthemaze.blogspot.com/2011/12/advent-season-of-waiting.html

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THESE STRANGE TIMES

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By Mick Fleetwood & Ray Kennedy

Faith, have faith

These strange times I think of a friend
They said was a man of the world
When all the time he was in the fight
Between the dark and the light
Yes, I too, my friend find the Devil
Trying to make me do things I don't want to do
And now I find myself crying out
God is nowhere, God is nowhere

These strange times I look in my heart
And see the dark not the light
And how I'm sad and wished I was in love
And I look to the sky and cry out
God is nowhere, God is nowhere

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And this is hell being caught
Between the dark and the light
Daddy, daddy hold on
God is now here, God is now here
Faith, have faith

These strange times I too have dreams
And things that make me wonder
If to walk a thin line is like dying alone
And I'm trying to find my way home
To where God is now here
And the dark is now light
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Yes, and I'm crying out
God is now here, God is now here
And that was Hell
Being caught between the dark and the light
Between the dark and the light
Faith

These strange times I look in my heart
And how I'm sad and wished I was in love

Have faith
Have faith
Have faith

And I look to the sky and I cry out
God is now here, God is now here
God is now here, God is now here

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Have faith
Have faith

My friend, I do wish that I was in love
I wish I was in love
I love you
I do wish I was in love
I love you
I wish I was in love

I wished I was in love

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Strange times are these in which we live

 when old and young are taught in falsehoods school.

 And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once

 a lunatic and fool.

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 Plato

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A FEW GOOD RELIGIOUS POEMS

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John Berryman

1914-1972

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This is from a much longer poem titled

 "Eleven Addresses to the Lord"

....this is "Address" Number 1.

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Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,

inimitable contriver,

endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon,

thank you for such as it is my gift.

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I have made up a morning prayer to you

containing with precision everything that

 most matters.

'According to Thy will' the thing begins.

It took me off & on two days.  It does not

aim at eloquence.

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You have come to my rescue again & again

in my impassable, sometimes despairing years.

You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves

and I am still here, severely damaged,

but functioning.

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Unknowable, as I am unknown to my

 guinea pigs: how can I 'love' you?

I only as far as gratitude & awe

confidently & absolutely go.

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I have no idea whether we live again.

It doesn't seem likely

from either the scientific or the philosophical

point of view

but certainly all things are possible to you.

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and I believe as fixedly in the Resurrection

appearances to Peter

and to Paul

as I believe I sit in this blue chair.

Only that may have been a special case

to establish their initiatory faith.

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Whatever your end may be, accept my amazement.

May I stand until death forever at attention

for any your least instruction or enlightenment.

I even feel sure you will assist me again,

Master of insight & beauty.

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Denise Levertov

1923-1997

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Flickering Mind

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Lord, not you

it is I who am absent

At first

belief was a joy I kept in secret,

stealing alone

into sacred places:

a quick glance, and away - and back,

circling.

I have long since uttered your name

but now

I elude your presence.

I stop

to think about you, and my mind

at once

like a minnow darts away,

darts

into the shadows, into gleams that fret

unceasing over

the river's purling and passing.

Not for one second

will my self hold still, but wanders

anywhere,

everywhere it can turn.  Not you,

it is I am absent.

You are the stream, the fish, the light,

the pulsing shadow,

you the unchanging presence, in whom all

moves and changes.

How can I focus my flickering, perceive

at the fountain's heart

the sapphire I know is there.

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Allen Ginsburg

1926-1997

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Psalm III

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To God: to illuminate all men.

Beginning with Skid Road.

Let Occidental and Washington be transformed into a
 higher place,

 the plaza of eternity.

Illuminate the welders in shipyards with

the brilliance of their torches.

Let the crane operator lift up his arm for joy.

Let elevators creak and speak,

ascending and descending in awe.

Let the mercy of the flower's direction

beckon in the eye.

Let the straight flower bespeak its purpose

in straightness - to seek the light.

Let the crooked flower bespeak its purpose

in crookedness - to seek the light.

Let the crookedness and the straightness

bespeak the light.

Let Puget Sound be a blast of light.

I feed on your Name like a cockroach on

a crumb - this cockroach is holy.

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                                     Seattle, June, 1956

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Joseph Awad

1929-2009

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For Jude's Lebanon

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It is said he was a relative of Jesus,

That his apostolate

Was to the land we know as Lebanon,

That he gave his blood for Christ.

What wonders did he perform

To win the Barnum & Bailey blurb,

"Patron saint of the impossible."

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I'm beginning a novena to St. Jude.

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His lone epistle opens lovingly:

"Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ

And brother of James, to be called

Who have been loved in God the Father

And preserved for Christ Jesus,

Mercy and peace and love

Be yours in abundance."

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I'm beginning a novena to St. Jude.

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He had a poet's way with words.

Evil, sensual men he called

"Wild wave of the sea,

Foaming up their shame,

Wandering stars for whom

The storm of darkness

Has been reserved forever."

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I'm beginning a novena to St. Jude.

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In Lebanon there is loud lamentation.

Beirut, once beautiful Beirut,

Bloodied by Christian, Jew and Druze,

Weeps like a wound just under the

world's heart.

Pontius Pilates in world capitals

Wash their hands, pronouncing solemnly,

"The situation is impossible."

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I'm beginning a novena to St. Jude.

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FAITH IS AN OASIS - KAHLIL GIBRAN

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Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

Lebanese-American Artist, Poet, and Writer

The third best-selling poet of all time,

behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.

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"I love you when you bow in your mosque,

kneel in your temple, pray in your church.

For you and I are sons of one religion,

and it is the spirit."

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"Faith is an oasis in the heart

which can never be reached by

the caravan of thinking."
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  "Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood."
  . . .
  "Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you, or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert."

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 "Nor shall derision prove powerful against those  who listen to humanity or those who follow  in the footsteps of divinity,   for they shall live forever. Forever."

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DANCE BEFORE THE LORD

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Below is Claude Debussy's piece that translates

in English to: "Sacred and Profane Dances" -

performed in a church (naturally!).

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Edited from The Feast of Fools

by Harvey Cox

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A people who dance before their gods

are generally freer and less repressed than

a people who cannot.

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Christians danced a lot in the early years

of the church. They danced in places of

worship and in churchyards. They danced

on saints' days and in cemeteries at the graves

of martyrs. Men, women, and children danced,

before the Lord and with each other.

Nevertheless, discomfort about dancing in

church was developing quickly.

The controversy appears openly in the

fourth century. St. Basil the Great,

Bishop of Caesarea (A.D. 344-407)

is a key figure.

*

St. Basil was against the dance for

one reason - it was too sensuous.

Displaying that suspicion of flesh which

has plagued Christianity off and on for

most of its history, he here clearly objects

not to the dance as such, but to its

explicitly sexual dimensions.

For the next thousand years, the

authorities of the church fought a

hopeless battle, first to guarantee

chasteness in the dance and, then,

losing that struggle, to abolish it altogether.

Century after century, bishops and councils

issued decrees warning against various

forms of dance in churches and churchyards.

But they persisted.
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Finally the Council of Wurzburg in 1298

declared them a grievous sin.

Even this final interdiction, however,

did not abolish religious dance.

Proscribed from the sanctuary, the

dancers moved to the square, the

churchyard, and back to the cemetery.

They tagged along at the edges of the

processions, or sometimes took them over

entirely. They showed up at pilgrimages.

They supplied the gusto at saints' days

and festivals. Also in Christian movements

outside the power of conciliar dicta dance

worship continued, and persists to the present.

In black congregations and Pentecostal

churches, rhythmic movement has never

disappeared.  "Go forth, young men, old men,
and maidens," runs the exhortation of

a Shaker elder a hundred years ago,

"and worship God with all your might

in the dance."

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