Pentecost 2019
Celebrating Diversity and Life
06.09.2019
Two mass school shootings and four states legislating what they called pro-life statutes made for an interesting end to the season of Easter and Ramadan – two religious seasons celebrating life. Life can be a bit ironic at times, eh?
During this season of Pentecost, a time in which believers are called to let the spirit of their beliefs be shown in their living, I will divide my time. On Sundays there will be a commentary on living. The rest of the days I will fulfill a promise I made to a cousin almost two decades ago about continuing my poetic writing.
My cousin was an English teacher, among other things. She served as a guide in the United Nations and later accompanied an ambassador’s family home and taught their children. She was very active in her church and in outreach missions to children and families in underdeveloped nations.
I will begin this series with a sonnet of hers, one I was blessed to receive and reprint with her permission. Hopefully, this Pentecost will be a way of spirituality for us all as we walk in love for ourselves, our neighbors, and yes, even our enemies.
A Sonnet on the Sonnet by Faye Edwards
I tried to write a sonnet chaste and tight
On why I like the ordinariness
Of life. With this I fear, a problem might
Arise insoluble – that life is blessed
With amplitude and randomness and rude
Distractions like a sudden shower fall,
Disorders that belie the rectitude
That reigneth in the sonnet’s narrow hall.
So we are opinioned, bound and cages in verse
That is so ordered, neat, precise – when life
Itself defies this form. Life is not terse.
A form I need unruly, tangle-rife,
Unrhymed) for life has rhyme not reason none)
Unmetered (life ill-times and never done).
I will not promise you a sonnet each time but rather a canticle, more of a prayer or narration, on living today and believing in yesterday while hoping for a better tomorrow. Life is, after all, a journey of lessons, an ever-present on-the-job training of sorts in which we strive to accomplish today what was not realized yesterday but dreamed of for the morrow.