I love this day.
It’s new and crisp and layered in a mantle of white.
Just a touch of snow, mind you.
Someone was very thoughtful in not letting the stuff go crazy.
My Husky is curled for a nap in a fresh dug hole,
As Huskies are want to do.
He lifts his head to glance my way,
Then chooses the snoozes.
I do love this day.
©2015 Joann Nelander
This poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson seems very appropriate for the New Year:
Ring Out, Wild Bells by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
All days have led to this day.
Yesterdays march up to the edge in Time,
But cannot enter upon my Now.
As precursors they stand,
Peering onto this Today,
Blind as bats.
Their edges approach
But halt at the Present.
Here I reign with my will.
If all my mistakes
Shout for change,
Am I now the fool
Who fails to learn?
With the sun,
I am begun.
Eternity beckons me,
Where Time cannot go,
Invites, “Come.”
He, Who sails on Eternity’s Wing,
Would be my Mender,
Not in a breaking of the Past,
But a knitting of it,
A seamless cloth,
As His very own.
The morrow begins as a Way I choose;
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Are gift to my being,
And beginning in this Now,
I am His.
©2015 Joann Nelander
FROM THE EUCHARISTICMEDITATIONS OF THE
CURÉ D’ARS:
“GO, THEN, TO COMMUNION.
My children, go to Jesus with love and confidence. Go, to live by Him in order to live for Him.
Do not say that you have too much to do. Has not the divine Saviour said:
“Come to Me all you who work and are heavily laden; come to Me and I will comfort you”?
Can you resist an invitation so full of tenderness and friendship? You work each day.
Communicate then each day. Do not say that you are not worthy. What nonsense! It is true you are
not worthy, but you are in need. If our Saviour had had our worthiness in view He would never
have instituted His beautiful Sacrament of love, because no one in the world, not even the Saints
nor the Angels, nor the Archangels, not even the Blessed Virgin, are worthy of it. Since He wishes
to abase Himself to our misery, let us work then to merit to receive Him every day. This is what the
Christians did in the early Church.”
Look Here
Hidden Jesus,
You fill my heart with desire.
I feel the agony
Of this earthly foray.
In Your Presence
Faith fills the silence.
Truth like beauty
Says You passed this way.
Your footprints in Time
Dot the heavens.
While I stand in the vestibule of eternity,
As one holding paradise at bay.
Aching emptiness
Of temporal schemes and dreams,
But mask my loneliness
For yet another day.
Step over the threshold
Where angel guards Eden’s gate
To drip Your fingers
Into my life as now I pray.
Copyright 2014 Joann Nelander
Old year passes,
Becoming yet another ghost,
Withered as leaves,
Crumbled, and carried aloft
By winter winds,
Too soon scattered
By the breezes of Time.
Is it truly spent,
Dead and long forgotten,
Living but in memory?
May not reflection
Call it from the grave,
Uncover the gain
Hold it fast
To live again?
How has its many waters
Blessed thee and me,
As sacred signs?
Will it, as muse, retain a power
For its having been,
And then no more?
What saints and angels
Sent my way,
Colored its day?
In sorrow,
Who came to hold my hand?
In joy,
Who shared my hearth?
Were there hugs, and smiles,
And laughter to tilt the scale of grief?
Can kisses and embraces be resurrected,
That fires of love be stoked
To warm and blaze anew?
Has my thanksgivings
Been recorded in the pyre,
Written in the embers now glowing
As tiger eyes flashing from the ash.
Years come, doomed , too soon to go,
But let them not hurry
To a crypt without a wake.
Drink the happy wine of memory,
Sip, as the seasons turn.
Contemplate and savor
The seasons of your soul.
©2011 Joann Nelander
Immaculata-Patroness
Joann Nelander Studio 