Mid-Winter's Blue

She paints across the evening sky,

with stretched wings freely mocking colder climbs

as the somber'd earth below echoes the graying hope of Spring.

Alone in the mist,

she flies in search of the promised feast,

availing hunger.

Nothing. 

No scratch of life to be found as distant stars brighten her hasty search; azure'd bleak dusking the cause.

And down, spiraling down she goes,

falling into the numbed life.

There she rests under the pillowed banks of snow,

buried with her unrequited dreams,

a promised peace to come,

melting beneath the mid-winter stars. 

Walsingham Explained

I recently came across this graphic explaining the image of Our Lady of Walsingham and was somewhat fascinated by it.  More detailed information can be obtained by clicking here.

The Yo-Yo Creed

I believe that I’m on a string, a yo-yo string. I'm good at letting go, sometimes and most always, to my detriment. It’s good to let go. It’s good to feel the heavy-laden release itself from my grasp. I can bind things so tightly, round up so neatly that I forget the big picture.  What's bound on earth can be loosed, though it's extremely tempting to stay bound up.  It is so easy for me, so natural in fact, that I can hardly notice what I am doing. “Where is God in all of this”, I ask. Indeed, my cry of dereliction goes unheeded. Letting loose; unbinding a strangle-hold that grips and winds itself round about my soul is the prescription needed.

Life’s little challenges often present themselves as gigantic tasks—obstacles barring me from believing that anything is possible. That truthy-feeling is flighty, revealing a false sense of creation.  The truth that I’ve come to know as holy and real is true and lasting freedom. Why? Because I keep getting pulled back towards God every time I wander.  Each time I bind, I feel the tug-of-war to let go.  Back and forth, so it seems, is the rhythm of faith. Doubt, as we know, is not the opposite of faith. Apostasy is faith’s contrarian.

Whether or not string-bound, I am still there holding on. The string cannot break; dirty with years of rubbed playing, but nonetheless strong as the day it was made.

Credo.

I believe.

I am a believer.

I am believed.

Amen.

The Revised Anthonite Vigil Office

Revised and expanded, the Anthonite Vigil Office has been published by St. Anthony's, OPC Press.  You can order your copy today by visiting Lulu.com.