R.E. Slater - Butterfly Wings of Promise

 

Butterfly Wings of Promise

by R.E. Slater

There is wisdom in renewing silence in one's life

When far too many souls speak noise and death.

Using special times of the year like the season

Of Lent, in aiding removal of worldly uproar.

Seeking olden paths of yesterday's lessons

To guide tomorrow's paths its glades

And shaded arbors, restoring peace

To the disquiet of restless voices.

Unweary the discord or havoc

Sown into the lives of those 

Around living desperate

days of want and need

Unheard, unsought,

Overlooked their

Casualties.

Nay, then,

Such silence

Is unequal to the

Noise erupting both

Streets and congresses

Of unwise souls fueling

Anger's injustices on aires

Of silent nods by unrighteous

Congregants across unrelenting

Pulpits shouting bondage's chains

To the ruin of lands and cities once

United by common civil bonds of grace

And mercy to all who seek public accord.

Yearning freedom's promised equalities of

Endless life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

R.E. Slater

February 19, 2021

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

An Accompanying Note

Stylistically: Because this is a visual poem I originally had it centered in the page but later noticed when viewed on cell phones or tablets it became distorted. Hence the smaller font and usage of left justification for viewing variety.

Subject Matter: I'm not sure I can consciously agree to stay silent even during the Lental period of spiritual reflection and penitence of spirit with so much noise filling the world by its oppressive rhetorics and actions from church and state here in America. To sit by and watch in silence may be the greatest crime of all - if not the greatest hypocrisy of all. Thus, have I thought these past recent years when witnessing again America's rising apartheidism and now, the dearth of hoary wisdom of Constitutional voices it once leaned so heavily upon but as soon conveniently forgetting when it comes to standing united with mixed cultures, races, nationalities, religions, and genders.

Now, in difference to America's civil unrests in the 50s and 60s, such as those led by Martin Luther King's civil rights protests, there but lies silent nods of granite approval about me embracing white racism and Christian Nationalism by friend and neighbor who grieve not as I grieve. Rather, in strident voice, yell and shout their rights to their ignominy and shame in my ear. Yet, for those who like myself yearn for a special kind of reverent silence during the holy seasons of the church year I find in its practice a grave rarity knowing its healing force if applied aright by the ones who would practice it.

These are not the silent, cheering portals to bondage and injustice but numbed souls held in pained worlds already haunted by the tyrannies of the day's trials and blames. Here, to those souls, may all wounded find healing in the refreshingly quiet breezes of unconquered hearts contemplating how to heal and aide amid the noise of fools more willing to extend suffering then to ease another's pain. May these small measures of fleshly grace overflow unquiet hearts seeking voice and direction how to do and to act in the tomorrows lying ahead.

R.E. Slater

February 19, 2021

Art: Heinrich Vogeler

 

“To those who contemplate the beauty of the earth may they find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated whispered refrains of nature... the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” ~Rachel Carson 

Artist: Jim Holland (American, 1955)

Title: ”Hopper's House" (2008)

Medium: Oil on canvas

Cape Cod artist Jim Holland's "Hopper's House”, one of the contemporary landscapes featured in Lauren P. Della Monica's new book, pays homage to 19th-century artist Edward Hopper.

 

Lauren P. Della Monica

Amazon link

 

Painted Landscapes, Contemporary Views explores American landscape painting today, its relevance in the contemporary art world, and its historic roots. This volume profiles sixty individual living artists (and over 200 color images) whose contributions distinguish important aspects of the genre and address land use, nature appreciation, and ecology through landscape painting. Encompassing every style from traditional realism (with a contemporary edge) to abstraction and non-objectivity, these contemporary artists range from today's art stars to emerging or regionally recognized talent in the Eastern, Western, and Southwestern regions of the nation.

 

Amazon link

 

Human forms can be intensely intimate or broadly universal. Here, figurative artists use the human form as a tool to express varied content and contemporary issues. These paintings depict our feelings and sentiments, our sense of belonging to a larger community in the contemporary world, while capturing the impulses behind the range of figuration presented by today's contemporary international artists. Portraitist Marlene Dumas presents figures in a gritty, unsentimental manner, evoking the essence of the human condition, while Kerry James Marshall paints the life of African-Americans in the twentieth-century, employing recent historical review to document the social challenges. British artist Jenny Saville paints the figure in massive scale, combined with an overt, never-ending interest in the pure rendering of human flesh. Hope Gangloff paints her figures as characters, intimate friends, and acquaintances, narrating a drama from their canvases. An important resource for those interested in contemporary figurative painting.

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article link

A Silent Lent

By Br. Timothy Danaher, O.P.

February 11, 2016

Image: Mirai Takahashi, Standing Alone

Imagine that the ghost of Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, appeared to you in a dream. So you ask him, “Sir, what do you suggest I do for Lent this year? I’m already late in choosing.” Before vanishing, he might reply solemnly with his famous words:

If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.

 

How much silence do you have in your life? That question is directly connected to the impatience, anxiety, and distraction we feel on a daily basis.

Silence is an age-old secret—not even exclusively Christian—with enormous benefits.

Time to testify.

I have been amazed by the energy I recover from silence. This happened last month when I was on retreat in the Shenandoah Valley. How many hours of sleep did I get per night? About six. How many do I get on average? About six. Yet after very full days—reading, thinking, hiking, praying—I felt amazingly refreshed. Because I had more silence.

Silence also helps us notice things around us. We Dominicans usually eat breakfast together, but whenever I eat alone in silence, I notice amazing things: “This bread actually has taste! I don’t even need to butter it,” or, “Look, my schedule has only a few simple things. It’s totally do-able. It’s stupid that I wake up with such anxiety.” Silence to the rescue again. 

Finally, silence actually isn’t silent. We hear ourselves in silence, and we hear God. Mother Teresa wrote much about this silence. For instance:

The essential thing is not what we say but what God says to us and through us. In that silence, He will listen to us; there He will speak to our soul, and there we will hear His voice. 

But right here, exactly at the deepest possibility of silence—to hear God’s voice speak to our most honest self—we hit a wall. Silence is scary. Few of us feel ready to hear God speak to us. What might he say? And are we also ready to even face ourselves? Those unpracticed in silence often come up immediately against an inner storm: worries, anger, lusts, projections about the future, snippets of what he or she said, and above all, memories.

If we need silence but lack the courage, how can we begin?

Here we need the wisdom of Nike: Just do it! We have to first choose silence—40 days is a great chance for a first attempt. Like exercise, there’s an initial painful conditioning period, but it doesn’t last very long! If someone who knows silence has promised you its benefits, you can keep at it and fight for it. 

But what if we lack the time or space for silence?

True, not everyone has the silence of Bl. Charles de Foucauld, living out in the African desert, a lone Christian alone with Jesus. We can only create silence in our lives if we first learn to STOP. Developing a habit of stopping is so absolutely rare and absolutely essential in our day and age. For one person it’s not turning on the radio during their commute; for another it’s leaving the iPod at home when you jog; for another it’s carving out ten minutes to sit alone in the early morning or late night.

It’s not too late. This Lent, choose silence!

To finish, I’ll share a poem that I wrote awhile back. It tells of a time in my life when I was uncomfortable with silence. I was 18 years old, and some friends had talked me into attending a retreat on the property of Camaldolese hermits—men who so prefer the richness and adventure of silence that they leave much else in life untended…

"Orchard"
by Br. Timothy Danaher, O.P.
 

We slept in the barn and listened to the rain
And woke to the morning chill
And through the bay door, I heard him pass outside
And lay there motionless until

I rose to glimpse him crossing the yard
His long nose and worn robes, as he tread
To his hut, putting wood smoke up on the wind
And at my feet was a note, he’d left in his stead

“Orchard down the path” was the phrase
So we laced our shoes and headed that way
Anything to escape the dreary silence
Of that wet and pointless and dreary day

I walked with thoughts of heavy golden fruit
And leaves turned red with sugar
And we laughed and joked and shouted in youth
Until our path met with another

We had missed our mark and doubled back
Then there at a bend in the way
Lay the old orchard, in overgrown turf
Unnoticed for it was shoddy, decrepit, and gray

As they had kept vigil, battling themselves
We rambled with dreams in our head
Only to find dead trees, rotting in the light rain
I should have stayed in and learned silence instead

✠

Br. Timothy Danaher entered the Order of Preachers in 2011. He is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he studied Theology and American Literature. Before Dominican life he worked as a life guard in San Diego, CA, and as a youth minister in Denver, CO.