Five Favorites: poems for Lent

Our daughter turned 18 this week. Brian prays blessing over each one, each year.
I only half listen because I'm trying to capture the photo, but it's a beautiful series of images!

Five favorite poems to read during Lent.

May I suggest you read out loud?  Even if you're alone.  Maybe even especially if you're alone. [click on the title to read each poem in its entirety]

-- 1 --

Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

Teach us to care and not to care 

Teach us to sit still. 

..... 

-- 2 --

The Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east, 

.....  

(this is one of the most satisfying read-aloud poems in existence!)

-- 3 --

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

..... 

-- 4 --

Requiem for a Friend by Ranier Maria Rilke

Once ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid to beat their breasts and howl for you all night, when all is silent. Where can we find such customs now ? So many have long since disappeared or been disowned. That’s what you had to come for: to retrieve the lament that we omitted. 

..... 

-- 5 --

For Lent, 1966 by Madeleine L'Engle

It is my Lent to break my Lent, 

To eat when I would fast,

..... 

Other good words online this week

• There's No Place Like Home by Garrison Keillor at National Geographic: "When a man lives in one place for most of his life, he doesn’t need GPS. He is guided by memories of boyhood bike rides, the ever present Mississippi, and the undeniable power of rhubarb."

• A Suggestion for Lent at Like Mother, Like Daughter:  "Live your Lent, don’t worry about watching yourself experience it, or for that matter, looking for signs that your children are experiencing it. You are and they are — if you live it."

• The Lent Project at Biola University: The Lent Project calendar starts on Ash Wednesday, March 5, and continues through Holy Week and Bright Week, ending on Sunday, April 27 and includes visual art, poetry, music and devotional thoughts for each of the 54 days of this season.

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A poetry-filled weekend for us all, dear ones.

For more Five Favorites, visit Moxie Wife!