Quote of the day, 14 February: Jessica Powers

My thoughts of you are fair as precious stones
out of the memory’s deep mysterious mines.
I cut and polish, hold the gems to light—
color of sea water, color of wines
coaxed from the earth’s sweetest fruits. I drop
them
down
into my heart, into the lifted hands
of love whose lone concern is your renown.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, o.c.d. (Jessica Powers)

The Gift of Love

Powers, J 1999, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, Siegfried, R & Morneau, RF (eds.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Gemstones collection jewelry set. Image credit: NPD stock / Adobe Stock (Asset ID#: 233326938)

#gift #heart #JessicaPowers #love #memory

Quote of the day, 5 February: Jessica Powers

God is the dawn, wakening earth to life;
the first morning ever,
shining with infinite innocence; a revelation
older than all beginning, younger than youth.
God is the noon, blinding the eye of the mind
with the blaze of truth.
God is the sunset, casting over creation
a color of glory
as He withdraws into mysteries of light.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, o.c.d. (Jessica Powers)

Songs Out of Silence, 3

Morneau, R F 2010, Songs Out of Silence : 99 Sayings by Jessica Powers, New City Press, Hyde Park NY.

Featured image: Dawn breaks, darkly, at Chatfield State Park in Colorado. Photo credit: Michael Levine-Clark / Flickr (Some rights reserved).

#dawn #God #JessicaPowers #poetry #SrMiriamOfTheHolySpirit

Quote of the day, 4 January: Jessica Powers

I went into the Christmas cave;
there was no Child upon the straw.
The ox and ass were all I saw.

I sought His stable where He gave
His goodness in the guise of bread.
Emptiness came to me instead.

Filled with my Father’s words, I cried,
“Where have You hid Yourself?” and all
the living answered to my call.

I found Him (and the world is wide)
dear in His warm ubiquity.
Where heart beat, there was Christ for me.

I went back to the Christmas cave,
glad with the gain of everywhere.
And lo! the blessed Child was there.

Then at His feasting board He gave
embrace. He multiplied His good
and fed in me the multitude.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, o.c.d. (Jessica Powers)

The Hidden Christ (1963)

Powers, J 1999, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, Siegfried, R & Morneau, RF (eds.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: A donkey, sheep, and cow surround a trough of hay inside a barn. Image credit: Future Vision (AI generated) / Adobe Stock, Asset ID#: 1766663015.

#Christmas #InfantJesus #JessicaPowers #poetry #SrMiriamOfTheHolySpirit

Quote of the day, 1 January: Jessica Powers

There was nothing in the Virgin’s soul
that belonged to the Virgin—
no word, no thought, no image, no intent.
She was a pure, transparent pool reflecting
God, only God.
She held His burnished day; she held His night
of planet-glow or shade inscrutable.
God was her sky and she who mirrored Him
became His firmament.

When I so much as turn my thoughts toward her
my spirit is enisled in her repose.
And when I gaze into her selfless depths
an anguish in me grows
to hold such blueness and to hold such fire.
I pray to hollow out my earth and be
filled with these waters of transparency.
I think that one could die of this desire,
seeing oneself dry earth or stubborn sod.
Oh, to become a pure pool like the Virgin,
water that lost the semblances of water
and was a sky like God.

Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit, ocd (Jessica Powers)

The Pool of God (1950; 1984)

Powers, J 1999, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, Siegfried, R & Morneau, RF (eds.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: French photographer Yoann Boyer captures this image of infinity from La Réunion. Image credit: Yoann Boyer / Unsplash (Stock photo)

#BlessedVirginMary #God #JessicaPowers #poetry #water

Quote of the day, 9 December: Jessica Powers

Here is a small bird cast as John the Baptist
who from my treetops is inspired to say:
I come from heaven to prepare the way.
Now in the east approach the feet of day.

Day will reward you well, my little bird,
who make his coming such enchanting news,
who with the sweetest music I have heard
unloose the golden latchet of his shoes.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D. (Jessica Powers)

Bird at Daybreak (1938)

Powers, J 1999, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, Siegfried, R & Morneau, RF (eds.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Photo by Aaron J Hill on Pexels.com (Stock photo)

#bird #JessicaPowers #poetry #prepare #StJohnTheBaptist

Quote of the day, 1 December: Jessica Powers

Come is the love song of our race and Come
our basic word of individual wooing.
It lifts audacious arms of lowliness
to majesty’s most amiable undoing,
to Godhood fleshed and cradled and made least.
It whispers through closed doors a hurry, hurry
to Tierce and fiery feast.
The liturgy of Advent plucks its bud
from the green shrub of love’s compendium:
O Wisdom, Adonai, Root of Jesse
and sign by which the mouths of kings are dumb,
O Key, O Orient, King and Cornerstone,
O our Emmanuel, come.
And Paschaltide prepares an upper room
where burns the fuller bloom.
Come is the small sweet-smelling crib we carve
from fir and bear across December frost.
It is the shaft of the flame-hungry Church
in Paschal spring, or the heart’s javelin tossed
privately at the clouds to pierce them through
and drown one in the flood of some amazing
personal Pentecost.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D. (Jessica Powers)

Come Is The Love Song (1952; 1984)

Powers, J 1999, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, Siegfried, R & Morneau, RF (eds.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Stock photo. Image credit: Discalced Carmelites (by permission)

#Advent #Christmas #JessicaPowers #OAntiphons #poetry

Quote of the day, 28 October: Jessica Powers

The saints and mystics
had a name
for that deep
inwardness of flame,
the height or depth
or ground or goal
Which is God’s dwelling
in the soul.

Not capax Dei
do you say;
nor yet
scintilla animae
nor synderesis—
all are fair—
but heaven,
because God is there.

All day and when
you wake at night
think of that place
of living light,
yours and within you
and aglow
where only God
and you can go.

None can assail you
in that place
save your own evil,
routing grace.
Not even angels
see or hear,
nor the dark spirits
prowling near.

But there are days
when watching eyes
could guess that you
hold Paradise.
Sometimes the shining
overflows
and everyone
around you knows.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD (Jessica Powers)

For a Child of God (1953)

Powers, J 1999, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, Siegfried, R & Morneau, RF (eds.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Jude Beck / Unsplash (Stock photo)

#ChildOfGod #indwelling #interiorLife #JessicaPowers #poetry

Quote of the day, 8 September: Jessica Powers

The Virgin Mary cannot enter into
my soul for an indwelling. God alone
has sealed this land as secretly His own;
but being mother and implored, she comes
to stand along my eastern sky and be
a drift of sunrise over God and me.

God is a light and genitor of light.
Yet for our weakness and our punishment
He hides Himself in midnights that prevent
all save the least awarenesses of Him.
We strain with dimmed eyes inward and perceive
no stir of what we clamored to believe.
Yet I say: God (if one may jest with God),
Your hiding has not reckoned with Our Lady
who holds my east horizon and whose glow
lights up my inner landscape, high and low.
All my soul’s acres shine and shine with her!
You are discovered, God; awake, rise
out of the dark of Your Divine surprise!
Your own reflection has revealed Your place,
for she is utter light by Your own grace.
And in her light I find You hid within me,
and in her morning I can see Your Face.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD (Jessica Powers)

And in Her Morning (1945; 1946)

Powers, J 1999, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, Siegfried, R & Morneau, RF (eds.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Rose Window depicting ‘Eight Titles of Mary’ by Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope at St Mary’s, Bourne Street, Chelsea (1952). Image credit: Amanda Slater / Flickr (Some rights reserved)

#BlessedVirginMary #FaceOfGod #God #JessicaPowers #poetry

Quote of the day, 10 July: Jessica Powers

Mother fair above all mothers,
by the scapular we wear
be your own sign of salvation,
which our willing shoulders bear.
Shield us from the foes of darkness,
we are prey they seek to win.
Guard us as your loving children
from the tragedy of sin.

Virgin of the Incarnation,
In the mysteries of grace
God has made his habitation
In our soul’s most secret place.
Toward that bright and inner kingdom
All our words and ways compel,
For the Father, Son and Spirit
In its sacred silence dwell.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD
(Jessica Powers)

Hymn: Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, sts. 3–4
Hymn at the Office of Readings, Solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Saint Simon Stock, Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs
Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. / Flickr (Some rights reserved)

Catholic Church 1993, Proper of the Liturgy of the Hours of the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel and the Order of Discalced Carmelites (Rev. and augm.), Institutum Carmelitanum, Rome.

#JessicaPowers #OurLadyOfMountCarmel #poetry #salvation #scapular #SrMiriamOfTheHolySpirit

Quote of the day, 31 May: Jessica Powers

The second bead: scene of the lovely journey
of Lady Mary, on whom artists confer
a blue silk gown, a day pouring out Springtime,
and birds singing and flowers bowing to her.

Rather, I see a girl upon a donkey
and her too held by what was said to mind
how the sky was or if the grass was growing.
I doubt the flowers; I doubt the road was kind.

“Love hurried forth to serve.” I read, approving.
But also see, with thoughts blown past her youth,
a girl riding upon a jolting donkey
and riding further and further into the truth.

Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D.
(Jessica Powers)

The Visitation Journey

Powers, J 1999, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, Siegfried, R & Morneau, RF (eds.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: A donkey used for transportation through the sandy mountains near the Dead Sea in Israel, pictured outside an Arab village on a clear day. Image credit: Approved Photography / Adobe Stock (Asset ID#: 1270220352)

⬦ Reflection Question ⬦
Am I willing to journey with love, even when the road is rough and the truth unsettling?
⬦ Join the conversation in the comments.

#BlessedVirginMary #HolyLand #inspiration #JessicaPowers #journey #poetry #SrMiriamOfTheHolySpirit #Visitation