To Live

To Live

06.10-12.2019

Season of Spirituality 2019

 

A life of sanctity; a life of purpose; a life of intent.

Daily living attempted but is the time well spent?

To be blessed and have it reflected in the pathways one went

Rejecting the evil and the venom they often vent.

The wicked only lead the world into descent

Their anger proving nothing good, just to torment.

The crowds become flavored with their malcontent;

Yet goodness will be seen in its ascent.

Those who serve compassion will see their efforts augment.

It is our choice to reinvent,

Our duty to live a life we profess to represent.

And when our time on earth is spent,

It will be that which we did which will us represent.

 

[Loosely based upon Psalms 1-3]

 

Pentecost 2019

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.