I have just returned from Edinburgh. It is many years since I attended Edinburgh University and continued to live there for several years. I made my way to my favorite used book stores, looking for treasures, curtailed only by the fact of limited space in my carry on luggage! No large checked bags! I was looking for poetry by Derek Mahon, a northern Irish poet. Almost giving up I asked the person emptying a new delivery of books if there might be anything in the store by Mahon. Amidst thousands of books she led me straight to an end shelf and pulled the one and only book they had, while apologizing that it was not shelved where it ought to have been! My smile was wide and my thank you deep! It is a slim book of poems but each and every page a delight. I will share with you one of the shortest of his poems.
Referencing the Roman poet Horace (possibly 65 BCE- 8 BCE) and his famous Odes, especially Ode 1.11 in which Horace urged Leuconoe not to try and predict the future , but to enjoy the present moment. Enjoy the day, pour some wine, and don’t look too far ahead. It was in this Ode that the Latin phrase we know so well Carpe diem is found, although it is thought that Horace had in mind a sense of “pluck the day” the way you would pluck a flower to enjoy it in the present. During the worst moments of COVID -19 we made promises to ourselves that we would worry and fret less about the future but enjoy the present. How soon we forget, returning to old patterns of behavior! Let Mahon ( and Horace) gentle bring us back to such promises.
How to Live
(Horace, Odes, Book One, 11)
Don’t waste your time, Leuconoe, living in fear
and hope
of the imprevisable future; forget the horoscope.
Accept whatever happens. Whether the gods allow
us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now
which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the
stone piers,
decant your wine: the days are more fun than
the years
which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with
zest
one day at a time, and never mind the rest. Derek Mahon
Horace Odes Book 1.11
Ask not (’tis forbidden knowledge), what our destined term of years,
Mine and yours; nor scan the tables of your Babylonish seers.
Better far to bear the future, my Leuconoe, like the past,
Whether Jove has many winters yet to give, or this our last;
This, that makes the Tyrrhene billows spend their strength against the shore.
Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more?
In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb’d away.
Seize the present; ( pluck the day) trust tomorrow e’en as little as you may.
Prayer:
Lord God,
in the gospels
You remind us
not to be anxious about life.
You remind us
that worry cannot add
a day to life.
You remind us
that we are loved and
forgiven. On this promise O Lord help
us so to live each day and one day at a time.
Hear our prayers today for those who face
a rough day. For the many who struggle for life
each and every day.
In silence hear my prayer for the world.
In silence hear my prayer for the migrants and asylum seekers.
In silence hear my prayer for the many who seek just to live and receive
so little justice.
May my silence give birth to speech and action, as You O Lord
remind us
to care for one another. Amen.
Prayers, Poems, and Christian Ponderings 
Welcome back! The post is well-timed. Yesterday I had a lengthy phone conversation with a friend far away who was just released from a hospital stay which included 2 weeks in the ICU and the belief that she would not survive. But she beat the odds and made it home. At the end of the conversation she said, “I’m different now. Me, and my second chance aren’t worried about tomorrow or next week or next year. We’re just enjoying today.” I liked how she personalized her second chance as if it was a partner in moving forward, one day at a time. She cried when she talked about her gratitude for the gift of life she had been given again. I guess we both were reminded that days are indeed more fun than the years.
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