listening

Listening to Love

Posted by Be Holy on December 21, 2015

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: Advent, deafness, desire, epiphany, God, listening, Love, poetry, prayer, Sinai, vision. Leave a comment

What are you saying, dear Lord?

You Who speak with Your poor creature.

Give voice to Your desire.

Place Your lips to my ear.

How do You speak?

Will I hear a voice?

See a vision?

Feel Your stirrings in my soul?

Will there be thunder as on Sinai

Or the breeze of Carmel?

Can I see in my blindness?

Hear, despite ears that have inclined to foreign gods?

Barnacles of perversion weigh on me.

Encrustations of sin hamper my ascent.

Give me feathers,

And wings of desire,

That I might rise, weightless and free,

Drawn by Your Love for me,

As music on the Wind of Your Spirit.

To Your Silence

Posted by Be Holy on October 8, 2015

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: listening, Lord, Love, meditation, noise, poem, prayer, silence. Leave a comment

Here I am Lord
I have brought the world and my day with me
What a motley crew arrayed before You
But not in vain.

We come with a clatter
My noise, our noise,
To the Silence.
The deafening roar
To the hallowed stillness.

Whisper in the chamber of our meeting
Where we tent with You,
Hope for the dying,
Faith to the listening,
Love to the willing.

Listening to You, O God

Posted by Be Holy on January 18, 2015

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: Catholic, Christian, God, Jesus, listening, meditation, poem, prayer. Leave a comment

I am listening, O God,
I am listening.

As my ear rests upon Your Breast,
The throbbing of Your Heart, a plaintiff call,
Sounds a sacred prayer
In unending rhythm, eternal.

Though stopped
In Your willed bodily Death,
It’s steady beat pierced the earth,
As Your Spirit descended to captivate
Those justified by Your Blood,
The prize of Salvation won upon Calvary’s mount.

High ridged mountains of prayer
Span the course of centuries,
As I now in my ordained place,
Offer my will to You in this my time.

As that same once spent Blood,
Now courses through my veins
In sweet Communion,
Speak peace to me.

© 2011 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved.

Listening to You, O God

Posted by Be Holy on November 4, 2014

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: Calvary, Catholic, Christian, communion, faith, listening, meditation, poem, poetry, pyayer, religion and spirituality, union. Leave a comment

Listening to You, O God

I am listening, O God,
I am listening.

As my ear rests upon Your Breast,
The throbbing of Your Heart, a plaintiff call,
Sounds a sacred prayer
In unending rhythm, eternal.

Though stopped
In Your willed bodily Death,
It’s steady beat pierced the earth,
As Your Spirit descended to captivate
Those justified by Your Blood,
The prize of Salvation won upon Calvary’s mount.

High ridged mountains of prayer
Span the course of centuries,
As I now in my ordained place,
Offer my will to You in this my time.

As that same once spent Blood,
Now courses through my veins
In sweet Communion,
Speak peace to me.

By Joann Nelander copyright 2011
All rights reserved.

Listening and Silent

Posted by Be Holy on August 30, 2012

Posted in: Lent, Poetry, Prayer & Prose. Tagged: God, Holy Spirit, listening, poet, prophet, recluse, silence, voice, wilderness. Leave a comment

It seems …
I am always talking to You,
That I am always with You,
And have no doubt
You are with me.
Listening and silent.

I am an endless monologue.
You, hovering Spirit,
Wordlessly eloquent abide.
You are Presence and Truth,
Listening and silent,
Thunderously silent,
Save for the stirring of my heart,
And the sometime rush of thought,
Coming, as it were,
From the bowels of my being
With frightening conviction,
And challenging my reticence
To speak aloud
The thoughts of solitude.

Reluctant always to go about,
And leave the cloister of my heart,
Where in Your chambers I find,
And hold dear,
Private audience with the King,

The world without is a noisy charade.
It woos the pride of me take center stage.
Where suddenly I realize
I have been talking much too much
To my regret.
I, naggingly, suspect
I have diminished
That which was my treasure
And ceased to learn.
Cacophony of me,
I cease to learn and simply rearrange
That with which I am familiar.

Where do prophets, poets and a would-be recluse,
Find a voice if not in You,
Rejecting even audience
To find You in my silence, Your silence.

Copyright Joann Nelander 2011