A Short Testament

A Short Testament
by Anne Porter

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,
And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.

Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,
And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,
Remember them. 

I beg you to remember them
When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death’s bare branches.






Mary Chapin Carpenter is a very special person with an amazing talent for music and lyrics and I recommend reading about her life story-  Click here for how she learnt to experience the "learning curve of gratitude."


There are two songs here but really there are so many others  I could play. 

Love the dog that has a "walk on" part early on in this one !





The Last Word

This fantastic song is supposed to be about domestic abuse but when I listened to it  this week I felt it could also be applied not just to what takes place between individuals, but also inside institutions including the church where power is used to exclude .


The chilling words perhaps explain why why some people just get tired of it all and walk away either physically or metaphorically.

What a powerful song..





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love Porter's 'A Short Testament'. Take it all to Him, current problems, past actions that still haunt us, and situations that seem too large, beyond our ability to make a difference....take them all to Him.
Andie

claire bangasser said...

Thank you for this, Phil.