Blue Eyed Ennis: November Monday 2013 Last Weeks of Liturgical Year

November Monday 2013 Last Weeks of Liturgical Year

So, we head towards Sunday's Feast of Christ The King and we are in the last weeks of the church's liturgical year, cycle C.

Then we move on to a new liturgical cycle, A, beginning with the first Sunday of Advent on Sunday 1st December.

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This coming Thursday sees Thanksgiving Day celebrations in the USA. I have always thought it would be good to have a similar day in the UK. I'll take this opportunity to thank all my blogging friends and readers for your friendship, encouragement and support during this year. You are all much appreciated and I am ever grateful for your companionship along this journey.

Meanwhile, I still haven't filled in the questionnaire on the pastoral challenges to the family. I keep looking at it, so maybe this week I will finally complete it. This week I'll be having a search for new Advent resources and hoping to update my own resources from the archives. Well, that's the general idea, but life often has a way of surprising and subverting me in this great spiralling adventure of faith.

As it's a Monday it's nice to start the week with a few songs so here's a selection from Josh Garrels.

Image source

Words Remain

Heaven and the earth will pass away
But your words all remain

And my hands are growing old
And weary with pain
Still I fold them to pray

To the one unchanged
Yesterday and today
Oh YHWH
I will try to stay awake
Take my last breath of faith
As I wait for you to come

Take me beyond
This land undone
Over the flood
By your word, spirit, and blood

It was prophesied long ago
Every word set in stone

Not one will pass away
Or walk alone
All that I own

Does not compare
To the love that we share
Please remember me

When the hour arrives
And you must decide
If you’ll wait for me to come

Take you beyond
This land undone
Over the flood
By my word, spirit, and blood

Beyond The Blue

Stand on the shores of a site unseen
The substance of this dwells in me
Cause my natural eyes only go skin deep
But the eye's of my heart anchor the sea

Plumbing the depths to the place in between
The tangible world and the land of a dream
Because everything here ain't quite what it seems
There's more beneath the appearance of things
A beggar could be king within the shadows,
Of a wing.

And wisdom will honour everyone who will learn
To listen, to love, and to pray and discern
And to do the right thing even when it burns
And to live in the light through each treacherous turn
A man is weak, but the spirit yearns
To keep on course from the bow to the stern
And throw overboard every selfish concern
That tries to work for what can't be earned
Sometimes the only way to return is to go,
Where the winds will take you.

To let go, of all, you cannot hold onto
For the hope, beyond, the blue

I sing yellow and gold as the new day dawns
Like a virgin unveiled who waited so long
To dance and rejoice and to sing her song
And to rest in the arms of a love so strong

No one comes unless they're drawn
By the voice of desire that leads em' along
To the redemption of what went wrong
By the blood that covered the innocent one
No more separation
Between us.

So lift your voice just one more time
If there's any hope may it be a sign
That everything was made to shine
Despite what you can see

So take this bread and drink this wine
And hide your spirit in the vine
Where all things work by good design
For those who will believe

And let go, of all, we cannot hold onto
For the hope, beyond, the blue
Said I, let go, of all, I could not hold onto
For the hope, I have, in you

Children of the earth
once dust but now life
living in times of flesh and bone
behold, spiritual fire
set a flame in my heart
Illuminate the darkest hours
where I wait,
before the dawn
to see
the glory and the power
of the Lord
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

The older we become
we must become more like a child
believing there's a land that lies beyond
all the things that we've seen

Make my mind free from fears
You know I can't do it on my own
the way is hard, but
we could fly over...
when you hear our wings
we sing
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

The Children's Song

Down on my knees

Praying please, have mercy now

Christ my shelter, in a world that tries to drag me down.

Open your mind.
Open your heart.
Open up your soul.

Jesus come in,
and make a broken man whole.

Carried the cross.
Carried the pain.
Carried the love.

We don’t belong here,
but to the Father above.
Jesus in heaven and
Jesus in hell below.
Paid for our sin,
broken body with the red blood flow.

Rise up in glory,
raise your hands to the risen King.

He’s God almighty, listen to his children sing.
Let 'em sing.
Hallelujah to our King.
Hallelujah, ruler over everything.
The children sing. Hallelujah to our King.

Hallelujah, ruler over everything.

In this world you will have trouble.
But Jesus overcame the world.
And our body is His Temple.
And we will worship forever more.

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More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

November Monday 2013 Last Weeks of Liturgical Year

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