*It's embarrassing to hear someone say that he's praying, that he's been praying or is about to pray.  Do  you talk like that about love?  There's no hope for someone like that.  Of course, he might be a saint; language is deceptive.

How refreshing are those people who never pray, who don't have words for everything, who seem rather to repress prayers.  Their silence sometimes speaks for them.

To pray is to set out, to love, to write, to paint, and to die at each instant.
-Jean Sulivan

*In front of me

you can tell

she's been walking a long time

she has come to

the old way deep with always

she lumbers a little

from east to west

her home once China

her hair fired white

we meet

I pass her

Happy New Year

You, too

she is still

in front of me

-Jerry  Schroeder, cap.

*TOWARDS YOU

Images from a Wedding

to face you

to squeeze your hand

and move over you

a ring of fire

to see my Self in your eyes

and not turn away

to wait for your words

to draw me close

and set me free

to be always "toward you"

even when going away

I promise

with the help of one desire

you can never fulfill

I'll love the way

you'll lead me there

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

Untitled(Crawling toward light)

 

*Why do you think it's easy to be poor in order to achieve inner change?  Must one live in a slum?  What's the highest salalry at which it's possible to encounter God?  This is all ideological twaddle.  Genuine illumination makes one poor instantly; having loses its importance.  Greed is also capable of filling the hearts of the poor who are rich with all they do not yet possess.  What's important is to be open to what takes place, for "Poverty is a great illumination/coming from within."

In this world controlled by money it's hardly possible for any one to be poor today in the manner of Francis of Assisi.  They'd become part of folklore and  be immediately taken over by the media.  Anyway, it's pointless to imitate the actions of the poor; poverty has to be a new creation, coming to birth in the depths of the soul.  To step forward without anxiety at the high noon of death, in the midst of every human passion.  To accept the world joyously without being duped by its values.

The encounrter with God is the supreme sign of wealth.  It's better to set out along the road to cover the distance that separates us from (God). And if there's only an abyss under our feet, to cry out or keep silent. To invite someone to renunciation when the sacrifice is not directed at the good of the other person is to make oneself the accomplice of a deception.  God has no need of sacrifices; men and women do.
-Jean Sulivan

song of a thousand addicts

mercy, mercy

i'm sorry

please forgive me

i need help

why do i do this 

here i go again

help me

thank you

i want to change

before i die

Come, Holy Ghost

 

"Don't make me come down there"

signed god on some sponsor's mega-billboard.

I cursed at what I had seen:

the failure of eyes to see Presence all-about

exciting ev'ry molecule and atom and sound.

I could have wept but pitied instead

the blind believers framing God so frightfully mean

hatred hot in God's eyes for what God sees

poised to rip God's beauteous creation apart

tearing us to shreds for our few or many sins.

But sighs rose from my mouth instead

watching light fill the foggy morning sky.

It felt like the other side of the Deluge

and I was Noah, blessed to hold the messenger dove.

I.

What's there to believe

sitting before videos of canned biographies?

When I look into the tragedy of my life

a life lost on blank minds pretending to survive

is Tupac Shakur the only tragedy in the Black race

or Michael Jackson a white-boy damaged buy the color green?

I needed affection but affection was denied.

The denial never banished the affection I sought

but surely denials infected my thoughts.

Now I'm an old man peeing on himself

yellowing my legs with more than the sperm of youth.

I am in and out, a depletion sitting side the empty road

damaging the struggles raging within my gut

suckling milk from The Abundant Breasts.

II.

It's difficult to know when you're growing up

without voice or heart and blind demands.

Lusting parents want sweat from their lads,

your time and tensions skewed by wants and poverty.

Where is hope when your mind's tied to absence

and needed bonds foregone as if religion

when pretences of meaning pour from twisted lips

and ears open to love are waxed with with noisy distractions.

Business substitutes for intimate conversations.

Hearts become poisoned with material exchange

when what's truly needed by the human searching

are intangible possessions purchased by caring hands.

We see but are snared into the desire for image

to have fame and toys and the pains of exclusion

but God's present in our moments of darkness

always Bread for the hungry prophet.

Reaching beyond the blue

 

Awakening

I.

On a recessed and murky wall

 the slate shadow of a lone ballerina stood

  waiting to wed her anima and animus

  hid beneath her ruffled skirt.

Questions arose from the shadows  

during her wait:  

what occurred when I was young?  

When did I become someone?

Was I an item on a grocery list  

something rushed home to refrigerate

  a child my parents chose to flagellate?  

Is this how I fell out of love?

Am I this wall or it a part of me? 

I hold the masculine 

but my "me" maps other memories.

II.

Yearning to be touched by the masculine sprite  

in regions her psyche long suppressed 

she faced the truth beneath her dress.

Then dancing upon shattered stone and rock

  her wobbly feet choreographed her release 

 forming movements in swirls  of grey  

till the red morn rose on the eastern rise 

spilling light into her awakening world  

warming her body to the presence of Love.

the tears of charlie

his life unheeard, now shared

for ears perked open to hear his tales

his truth gathered in his breast years long:

these now tease words from his trusting lips

lips that had long awaited someone to enter the garden of his heart

roam there, lay on the lea, picnic beneath his bleeding tree.

charlie's tears leaked quietly down as joyous drops

assusred that he was heard through once buried words

and in the friend-padded embrace of the revelations of his heart

he was set free to be the story-teller of his past. 

Life is more difficult than death

 

cheeba

with a start my heart jumps

the howling pup struggles

pounding the cage blocking

the reach of its exertion

felt like me, blockaded

shut within some confining prison

somewhere in a coffin dying

its struggling fueled my hidden fright

yanking at some past isolation

some solitary confinement long forgot

my breath labored

my heart raced to avoid entrapment

fleeing the once boxed and tortured hurts

empathy redeemed me

reaching for the crying puppy

opened a door to free my repressions

cheeba, cheeba, hampered mutt

 unbound the power of past abuse

off'ring hope for uncaging me 

Untitled

 

ready to rise?

i.

i am a mountain ready to rise
pushing at the crust o'er my life
in a drive to move beyond the borders
of my fears, doubts and laws
holding bound the spirit within

i want to grow

ii.

so, why mountain, won't  you rise
push your nose above the terrain
break the crust encasing your heart?
pull through liberated
with the might of your mind
shov'ling back the words locking you down



up-climbing

up-climbing stairway
to a light, top-side bright
framed in grill-work, worm-free

a warm-lighted gateway
with black-box entry-knob
 a treasure guarded therein 

for willing seekers
groping for Wisdom
like wise-ones of yore

searchers who climbed
iron stairways of  light
into the seeing-fields of grace

with myst'ry-laden mindscapes
where magic-shielded sages
pull magnetic-spirits forth

to mother the sin-thinned pilgrims
crying with thirsty-hearts
for entry into divinity's ground

Red, white and blue

 

Communion Antiphon:He made me do it

 

Post-mortem

When they say

"We won't forget you!"

don't believe them.

When you're dead,

they're dying,

their remembrance-time

quite short,

no longer than a breath.

Stay cool.

The earth is warm.

Lay where you are.

Enjoy New Eden.

Any "amount" of God is enough. To have a "little" is to possess All.

*My only definition of art is that which consists of celebrating, singing, and accomplishing beauty.

-Balthus

Halston

 

*Surely due to my Christian belief, I am totally indifferent to society's seductions, the notorious personality cult that the modern world imposes on artists.  The Desert Fathers, apostles who should be our guiding lights, promulgated renunciation, an extreme bareness that permits me to reach my interior vision, what I really am.
-Balthus




*Modern painting hasn't really understood that painting's sublime, ultimate purpose-if it has one-is to be the tool or passageway to answering the world's most daunting questions that haven't been fathomed.  The Great Book of the Universe remains impenetrable and painting is one of its possible keys.  That's why it is indubitably religious, and therefore spiritual.
-Balthus

 

O God look

Behold the wild-child
now trapped
now tamed
now trained

I weep o'er the caging of him
longing for some wildness
for the innocence of his heart



o when the revolution swoops down upon Arabia
the sands shall boil blood under the night sun
and dates will be sweet fruit on which others shall die

the king shall be a dream for a change
and royalty the dreamers' changing guard
as Allah's jihad of breaks dawn upon the captured minds

for Isa's name shall be oasis-sweet
water slaking the thirst of the caravaned tribes
searching in the wastelands where the watersheds hide

and for the heavenly-fountain gushing with peace

Wrestling with Truth

 

Mary of the scarred and wounded

 

Night's unencumbered quietness

with rains echoing through the spouts

cloaks the awareness of a deepening rite

encircling flowers, trees and mouse

The renewing of flowered-fields

in the dark-time of the sun's rest

placing surprises beneath our window-sills

to be relished whene're we wake

What a wonder-play at nature's hand

games of cyclic Spring-time glee

movements when Time puts Day to bed

and Eros re-seeds the night

I see through what you see

yet beyond what your eyes conceive

I see history repeat

I see tales told beneath tears

I see despair on front page rags

I see faces caught in  unflattering pose

I see Americas hidden despicability

racism arising twisting you and me

Perhaps I'm blind and over-sensitive

perhaps I'm emotional and beat

 perhaps I 'm a perhapsible freak

submerged in illusory dreams

perhaps, perhaps...

but history is red with the excuse of justice

and my people are buried neath the excesses of excuses

I'm one lone voice anguishing at what I see

with death as the picture that describes it best

That's what I see

If death doesn't get you, something else will.

Contageous Light

 

kill god

kill god
that  god be God
freed from musts and needs
and puerile dreams
from words  and cash
and self-charming wants
from dread and gain
that birdle God

so smash the idols
and let them go
for god is God
once God is God
un-bottled
roaming free

then one might find
what one has lost
by holding tight
to the One sought

Untitled

 

how important you are

why is it

that when you're dead

folks speak words never said 

before your face

she was so good

really someone unique

special in his own right

who will replace him

while all you did

was close your eyes

pressed a smile
if 

that's how you died

to rot

while others claim your dough

walk you to court

your will in hand

thus you lay still

in burial clothes

because soon enough

they will be gone

*Out

of light 

of darkness

of every

I am

at play 

on the edge 

of the deep

I miss 

being 

in 

but more 

and more 

I miss 

being 

out!

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*I think of Dostoevski in The Brothers Karamazov when the body of Alyosha's beloved Father Zossima begins to stink in death instead of giving off fragrance as the dead body of a saint is supposed to, and at the very moment when Alyosha sees the world most abandoned by God, he suddenly finds the world so aflame with God that he rushes out of the chapel where the body lies and kisses the earth as the shaggy face of  the world where God, in spite of and in the midst of everything, is.
-Frederick Buechner

art piece from Detroit

 

Worm-way

Theres's a worm-way through the barricade

some weakness that hastens its fall

It's the nature of things

of security founded on walls

Leave a hole that the air might pass

some light to touch the face of fear

These might save you one day

when suffocation brings you to tears

Don't slay the squawking bird

It may scare the asp at your feet

The path to safety is list'ning

the venue where the worm and you can meet

*...one must search for the humanity behind the inhuman.

-Ramin Jahanbegloo, Iranian scholar

 

contention in the air

clouds call on the wind-song flying

loosely moving by whim-some laws

via hot and cold waves of the morning

the sun and moon lights of night

the fury of tornadoes scream

with lightening on the quiet days

with adventures and grey might

at high levels taken in stride

the shapes formed by their blowing 

are beheld by eyes of awe

they're heard by ears of fear

'cause contention's in the air

*God  Talk

some

spend most of their waking

and dreaming

hours

trying to avoid

feeling guilty

instead

of trying

to stay

in love

with

Someone

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

Eclipse

 

everything gray

if Life were black and white

then everything would be gray

like gray-gold and gray-light

gray-red and gray-white

gray-sun and gray-moon

gray-seas and gray-noon

gray-feet and gray-tongues

gray-souls and gray-songs

gray-homes and gray-lawns

gray-faces and gray-dawns

gray-gatherings and gray-joys

gray-love and gray-buoys

a gray world of gray scenes

nothing gay, ev'rything gray

*Each generation expresses its spiritual vision of the world and creates its own plan of the Church.  How could it be otherwise without surrendering to utopia?  What is important is to accept everything that is not essential to the message as provisional and contingent and to struggle for a greater transparency.  For nothing is worse than to abandon concrete existence for social or even moral ends, allowing oneself to believe that in the spiritual order action is born from doctrine.  Action is born from an interior experience, in the communion of faith, which is itself a creative diversity.

-Jean Sulivan

 

we reach 70

and our body shouts aloud

"You will die"

embarrassed

we swallow pills 

take longer walks

support a doc

failing nonetheless

hankering for a longer stay

we arrive too soon

the surprise taking our breath away

we die, mourning not our loss

arriving at sanctity so ever slow

life, shorter that we thought

continues longer than we'll know

but we've entered a better place

a space that God knows best

where we can smoke our cigarettes

*In any serious spiritual life we must come to a gulf that cannot be crossed from our side.  We must find ourselves stripped of all expectations and aids, all human programs and procedures, as we stand at the edge of the ocean of infinity.  Our finite ladders - of theology, of spiritual exercises, of psychological theory and political programs - do not reach across to the other side.  The gap is not bridged from where we stand.  We are emptied of all we possessed.  We discover our true poverty, our radical dependence on God.

-Ann Belford Ulanov



*Without addressing the spiritual needs of people, without focusing on all human relationships and personal trust, democracy was likely to be just as absurd as communism.
-Vaclav Havel

 

i want

i want to cry boldly

my insides flushed of toxic sins

i want tears to fall freely

my lungs filled with scented grace

i want my mind scraped

my barnacled thoughts replaced

i want to collapse open

my heart nourished on chaste blood

i want fresh fields to sow

my imagination stocked with verdant visions

i want virtue to flow fluidly

my weaknesses proudly owned

i want bent me to be habilitated

my tarnished burdens renewed

i want my old man to become woman

my woman to birth a new man

*I left Alabama in 1961 and never went back to live.  Not because I disliked it but because living outside it, I can see it more objectively.

-William Christenberry

*The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize.

-Chinese fortune cookie

If death doesn't get you, something else will.


There's only so much snot your tissue can hold.

 

*In the spiritual order there are no professors, only discoverers who reveal to others while they gradually renew themselves.  They're the ones whom we try to re-enact within ourselves, who start us on our way without even wanting to.  They hold no worldly authority; their only authority us that of authors - that is, those who engender, nourish and increase life.
-Jean Sulivan

that happens

was it conversation that eased my agitation

the speaking of truth to an open ear?

was it hearing myself share fear

exposing doubts crawling about my head?

were these enough to calm the beast

sufficient feed for the dragon "long-side the road"?

to experience peace while my world is topsy-turvy

be content while dogs nip at my heels

is the courageous battle within me

God standing near refereeing the bout

that happens when Hope finds one home

or one awakens to find Love at your side

good talk breathes fresh air into stale lives 

friendship, God's tonic, when chaos' romping about

the prison of their making:an after-thought

i don't know how i birthed you

it was as if my heart split

and venom spilled out

i don't know what mother i was

don't know which breast i nursed you on

was it anger, was it fear, was it both

i don't know 

i know i broke for freedom

bent the bars compressing my soul

set free my lungs

and began to breathe in truth

Our tired and wearied nation

 

i.

i sit writing at a square blue table

recording very simple scenes i see

typing at a machine where ignorance can be bred

leading to actions we fear to know.

ii.

here there is nothing to pursue.

the innocent are themselves walking about smiling

dragging the packaged bones of their dead

saying "these are our people

images etched in his'try's mem'ry

cuneiforms decorating the pinnacle of the temple."

they speak as if aware of a public internment

where plastic flowers are lain upon graves

as if problems there will leap into a hearse

and the savior arrives in a gilded chariot.

iii.

duped by illusions masking repression

fascinated by love and searching for affection

they swing upon a trapeze, hoping to be caught

lest fear falls into their empty hearts.

but give them time and a crisis of identity

their props will collapse with an appropriate persecution.

their converted minds will return them to slav'ry

and Truth will be dashed upon unforgiving ground.

iv.

headaches and heartaches with nothing to show

imagine themselves something like mud splattered walls.

their safety net is fear, carried like freedom in their breast

stones and dust forming a crust like a body map.

sure-sounding and law-pounding

they nail coffins with their hands

but they must lie to prove their accusations

must lie to enter the brains of the nation.

will their eyes ever open?

will Jesus appear with a stamp of approval?

v.

having been fingered as dangerous to society

the guilty are marched to the fields of execution

dragging the bags of distorted garbage

standing upon the garrote looking for heaven.

the secure doubt the repetition of history

with the seductive dangers borne therein

for it's the illusion of protecting something

that teases gods to burn the bodies of the insane.

all enemies are prisoners, both within and without

assuring the saved that their system works.

vi.

i've listened to the music of the nations.

i'm not sure but one hope is surely sung:

continue the search for the response to the noble.

sing a song that will bring the human home.

Even when you're dead, you still have to pay your bills.

what marks me is pagan

Jesus a passenger in my roller-coaster life

i see him through tainted lens

abused as my abused self

he shows his forgiving face

bares his body crucified

i behold his twitching flesh

acknowledge his suff'ring heart

one day i'll be free

own him with eyes once offered me

scale-less, washed, beached and graced

focused without flash or glare

that day i'll dance through death

holding him as partner for life

that day hope will have birthed my dream

acceptance of my violenced flesh

and pains borne through years of fright

art piece at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

 

rains fall
as if this town needs cleansing
as if a foul stench rises from its core

perhaps this is the reason for
these heaven-dropped tears:
to wash blood from the pining streets

murders are up, statistics say
race and rape demand attention again
drugs make cash while frying heads
the heat from guns bake more than bread
nearby the homeless rest in parks
while food spoils sitting on a shelf

this storm cries about this night
dropping hints
there's something odious in the land

but rain can't wash these stains down drains
the down-pours never scrub the human heart
soul-tears and hands-on
wash wounds marking the city's charts

*Night Drive

this gentleness

this steady

stream

of patience

a rest in

restlessness

that drives

toward dawn

through

unknowing

this 

drive

toward

this

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*To want to bring the Gospel back to its source-to let it be difficult, to refuse to turn it into cultural gruel-is this showing scorn for simple people?  For how many years I've heard that refrain.  The simple people, its worth saying once more, have a spontaneous affinity for spiritual things.  It is the enlightened ones, rather, who think they possess the meaning of the message and keep cooking up gruel for the unsophisticated.  They're the ones who show contempt by treating people like dunces and justifying the repression and guilt which consolidate their power.  When I hear them I think of an old man leaning over a child and using baby talk; there's an ironic gleam in the eyes of the child that says, "Lay off, dummy!"

Genuine love of men and women is shown first by rejecting the crowd as such.  That's what the Gospel does: it leaves the love of humanity to politicians.
-Jean Sulivan

Morning prayer/St. Ignatius of Antioch

 

there will always be something

always wishing for  another path

another face

another something

that's different from what we be and see

another might 

another flight

that might lift us from our plight

but No!

there won't be

just can't be

being what we be

this humankind

un-kind

broken and smashed

greedy and hung'ring for another's spot

or land or life

or whatever'll pull us from our plight

of greed and lust

of all or bust

how live with it with a smile

bowing our heads and cry

of thanking God

and doing our best

to make a little peace

and enjoy our tiny piece

of life on this earth

until death do us cease

*If I say that this world is beautiful and good, that I love it, this doesn't mean the I'm not aware of the horror, the degradation and the danger of impending catastrophe.  I'm speaking of what is true in consciences that are stronger than evil.

-Jean Sulivan

Christian language, as soon as it moves away from experience and is no longer verified by it, becomes elastic, full of distortions and quibbles, concerned with synthesis and false harmony.  When we embroider emptiness with abstract formulas, we have the very opposite of a language of hope.

-Jean Sulivan

 

red light

he sped to her room

whence he eyed the one 

dressed for his joining;

his passions lusted for the rose

vased upon the mantelpiece-

thorns and all

on going to st. michael's

o dark room of ebon' space

door framed in graced light

you, friend of risk and sweet mystery

draw yourself to my troubling doubt;

the Orange Sun-Dot pinholes your bosom-dark

a blazing stream of fiery beam

bending back 'pon Fear's embrace

for rites of Hope that eyes can't see

*The distance is nothing; it's only the first step that is difficult.

-Madame du Deffand