PEONIES
The peonies, too heavy with their beauty,
slump to the ground. I had hoped
they would live forever but ever so slowly
day by day they’re becoming the soil of their birth
with a faint tang of deliquescence around them.
Next June they’ll somehow remember to come alive again,
a little trick we have or have not learned.
-Jim Harrison
“I ask this much” was the title of a post I wrote ten years ago, not long after my husband died. My thoughts then were inspired by the poem below, which I recently revisited. Yesterday I began to notice afresh the near constancy of my murmuring and complaining; today I was encouraged by the testimony of my former self, who wrote back then,
And every day, I feel a great Love surrounding me, like the pleasant air that holds me and gives me oxygen even while I am having those pity parties. Or like the sun whose heat is keeping me alive and giving me energy.
Let us be up and doing! And let’s start by asking the great Maker of the sun and of us, for His light, and strength, and joy. Our asking will be the beginning of the receiving.
PRAYER at SUNRISE
O mighty, powerful, dark-dispelling sun,
Now thou art risen, and thy day begun.
How shrink the shrouding mists before thy face,
As up thou spring’st to thy diurnal race!
How darkness chases darkness to the west,
As shades of light on light rise radiant from thy crest!
For thee, great source of strength, emblem of might,
In hours of darkest gloom there is no night.
Thou shinest on though clouds hide thee from sight,
And through each break thou sendest down thy light.
O greater Maker of this Thy great sun,
Give me the strength this one day’s race to run,
Fill me with light, fill me with sun-like strength,
Fill me with joy to rob the day its length.
Light from within, light that will outward shine,
Strength to make strong some weaker heart than mine,
Joy to make glad each soul that feels its touch;
Great Father of the sun, I ask this much.
–James Weldon Johnson 1871-1938
“In the wide stillness of the Alaskan tundra—
where the sky stretches open like a prayer
and the rivers flow between worlds—
God planted a soul full of hidden beauty.”
So the life of St. Olga of Alaska began in 1916, in the village of Kwethluk. The story of her life and how she became a saint is well worth reading here: “Righteous Mother Olga.”
Services for her glorification this week will be livestreamed: Livestream services
We are having services in celebration at our parish in California as well, joyfully adding her to the company of Orthodox Saints of North America for whom we are so thankful.
Guided by the heavenly light
and touched by Christ’s rich mercy,
thy loving hands heal the wounds
of those hurt in the past.
Thy soft voice encourages all
to remain faithful to God,
for the eternal Lord will give the steadfast
a crown of life.
O holy Mother Olga,
visit us with love and reassure us,
that we may accept whatever cross we must bear
as chosen by the merciful God,
and that, through thy prayers,
we do the will of God
for the salvation of our souls.
-Hymn for the Feast
LAY BACK THE DARKNESS
My father in the night shuffling from room to room
on an obscure mission through the hallway.
Help me, spirits, to penetrate his dream
and ease his restless passage.
Lay back the darkness for a salesman
who could charm everything but the shadows,
an immigrant who stands on the threshold
of a vast night
without his walker or his cane
and cannot remember what he meant to say,
though his right arm is raised, as if in prophecy,
while his left shakes uselessly in warning.
My father in the night shuffling from room to room
is no longer a father or a husband or a son,
but a boy standing on the edge of a forest
listening to the distant cry of wolves,
to wild dogs,
to primitive wingbeats shuddering in the treetops.
-Edward Hirsch
Gladsome Lights 