Happy New Year!

The year has started and much like the one we have just left behind, we continue to have the same struggles and opportunities. Today I wish to share two very short poems from Amanda Gorman, a poet who fills us all with hope and hopefulness. Her words are as eloquent and as graceful as the personality of their author. I think of her, more as a prophet poet, a protagonist poet. Her voice is certainly one we need to listen to and her words deliver to us a generous mixture of forgiveness and challenge. So welcome to 2023, our challenge is, what are we going to make of it. Let us be willing to live with a more than generous measure of eloquence and grace. Ponder the poems, pause and pray, and remember you can make a difference. Amanda Gorman’s poems, when we give time and space to breathe her words deep in our soul, make new possibilities come about. Happy New Year!

EVERY DAY WE ARE LEARNING
Every day we are learning
How to live with essence, not ease.
How to move with haste, never hate.
How to leave this pain that is beyond us
Behind us.
Just like a skill or any art,
We cannot possess hope without practicing it.
It is the most fundamental craft we demand of ourselves.

LIFE
Life is not what is promised,
But what is sought.
These bones, not what is found,
But what we’ve fought.
Our truth, not what we said,
But what we thought.
Our lesson, all we have taken
& all we have brought.
Both poems can be found in Amanda Gorman’s book Call us What we Carry

Prayer:
Holy God,
Creator of the Sun, Moon and Stars,
To You we lift up our praise and our prayers.
We marvel in the mystery of Time,
seconds, hours, days, weeks, months and years.
We busy ourselves attaching numbers to Time
and so often miss its beauty and possibility.
Help us to live in the present.
With proper regard for the past
and expectation of the future, help us
not so much to mark time but to live time
and to live in the fullness of Your grace and mercy
O Holy, and Loving God. Amen.