Instrument of Peace
Where there is hatred, let me bring love
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith
Where there is falsehood, let me bring truth
Where there is pain, I’ll comfort you
Where there is silence, let me sing praise
Where there's despair, let me bring hope
Where there is blindness, let me bring sight
Where there is darkness, let me bring light
And with these words I speak
Grant that I may not so seek
To be heard but to hear
To be consoled but to console,
Not to be seen, but to see
To be loved but to love
For when we give love we will receive
When we forgive love, we’ll find reprieve
It is in dying we’ll be released
Make me an instrument of peace
Words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi; lyrics by Olivia Newton John (from the album "Grace and Gratitude")
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Beyond the horizon
where naked skin of Earth
presses
naked skin of Sky
children of imagination are conceived
in intercourse of mystery.
Time curves…. Dragons
form circles
in bubbles of eternity.
The ageless shepherd of our shadows
enters the pasture
that was and was not green
before the birth of poetry. Dreamers
drunken in the breath
of dark divinity dream
in secret dramas of their souls. At
times wild cries out for wilderness.
Or meditations of a mountain’s crest
become light’s prayer
in hearts of darkness.
Creation consents…. Nomads
bearing gypsy tents
thirst for twilight. Ancient
fires in books of alchemy. Riddles
of each night. The longest
word in life… is “Yes.”
David Sparenberg
11 August 2009
LISTEN
You’re not listening
Sky is falling
You’re not listening
Sea is rising
In tempest-rage
You are not listening, no
And the angel of death
Comes on
Like rolling thunder
Earth is eaten away – this place
Now
This is a terrible moment
In the valley of tears
In a time of tribulation
Terrible, it is terrible I say
Truly terrible
When truth is at risk
And the heart and lungs
On all sides
There is betrayal
And everywhere, everywhere
In the eyes and mouths - poisons
Now, not before
Not after – Look – be sensitive
The ecstatic flame of angel
With the eyes of crucifixion
The one crucified
This
This is when the senses
(And the soul
Housed, ecosophic, inside the body)
Need to be alert
When choices are monumental
When life, all of life, life is in the balance
Answer this:
Do you need to
Hear the sirens screaming?
Do you need to
Witness the perfect storm?
To feel black rain, as in
August ’45? Does
Creation need to split apart for you and
Death weld together for faith
Dead Earth, dust
And deadly sky?
Where are you, where really
When I turn to look around
When I search to hear your footsteps
Feel you breathing
Do you dare to know
We-you and I-we are still alive?
There is difference
Life is on one hand, death on the other
Different
To live and die
Than to live for death, to
Be death’s ambassador,
The pallbearer, the anguished who
Tore the puzzle apart, flung it, pieces
Into furnace—end stop, endgame, ominous
Into oblivion
Answer to that – know it
Know (no), know
Your answer will be binding
Wait, wait, wait then… wait I beg you
For here there is love
There is
God in the shape of prayer still
And that is Kingdom
Blessed
Are the peacemakers, the
Earth-walkers
The brave who
Turn aside to feel the heartthrob, heartache of the world, to
Hear a teardrop fall
In velvet morning, an
Angel sigh despair, a newborn
Cry in the blood pool of life
To share, to taste, to give, to take
Our common bread
Our days
Body
Holy
Flame
Cross
He walks upon the water
In a wounded whisper
Word
From mouth to ear
Far off and near
The sound
Of spreading morning
Star fallen
On Hiroshima and the end
Star of Bethlehem!
Listen…
It is not prosperity
That the midnight bells are swelling
But Christ Mass and the dove
The dove
The dove of now
Peace – the cleansing rain
Listen…
Hush, be gentle, gentle I beg you
Listen…
Christmas Eve, 24 December 2007
from HEALING, A Book of Poetry by David Sparenberg
It is good to enter
a beautiful cathedral.
But you do not need a
church, synagogue, temple
or mosque to be with God.
You do need the Earth
a heart, a soul
and the sky.
It is good to pray.
But better to walk as prayer
and better still to breathe prayerfully
through the stations of night
and the challenges of day.
It is good to have love of self.
But better to reach
with healing hands
into the pathos of otherness.
As thin as the air of
a vision of doves
and the intimate longing of lovers,
that is the nearness of God.
David Sparenberg
15 December 2008
Betty
Love
Aad Sach
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