For some there comes a time when a second chance is given.That time then becomes a celebration of the unrecognized gifts of the past and humble gratitude for the wonder of present.
This then is a collection of reflections and comments on life,work,love and faith to be sung ,and danced to, in thanksgiving for a second chance.
"For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning."
—T.S. Eliot
The New Year’s Ballad of the Wrong Answer Boy
Contemplating the arbitrariness of the celebrated
annual milestone
He thought it a benefit to consider the sometime
mile markers
On the decades of the pilgrimage labeled the
Odd-yssey thus far.
(Sort of a long term Ignatian Examen of sorts)
The first remembrance that flashed was during
during the elementary days when the
good Sister asked “
So, what is it you want to be?” “Kind” ,he said.
The weaponized yardstick swiftly appeared
Cracking down the back of his head.
She said “Again”
Pondering a possible right answer the boy whispered,
“Just who I was meant to be.”
That yardstick raised and his arm stiffens holding back the
swoosh saying to the
Shocked nun, “never again.” Since that incident he was
left to his own mistaken devices
falling off the track on a number of occasions .
He eventually found solace in music, poetry and books.
The next test was the future
father in law’s Interrogation “ So what can you do with being
an English Major?
How will you provide for a family ?” And on and on…
The now young man just smiled
confidently and said “ I’ll figure it out.”
Again, wrong answer.
After twelve years of institutional spiritual formation …
‘these are the rules… the divine DNA is in all things, love one
another, live in peace , be selfless, be merciful, trust and have
faith and live in truth and
integrity , action is greater than words ,follow the rules in our
book and don’t forget to memorize and say these prayers
daily.” But , the world didn’t care much about that “Holy roller.stuff.”
How much do you have
;How important are you and why should I care about you seemed
to become the metrics of
importance and success. How well one panders to others was
defined as a key foundational
standardized barometer. He got lost on that river and found
himself submitting to worldly
promises.Some wizards tried to rescue him converging
the religious formula with
promises of prosperity. “That might work”, he believed.
Again, he was wrong. It didn’t.
It wasn’t until he crossed that line when his heart half
broken that the only way to
continue was to get a second chance.Somehow
someone something intervened .
Some mysterious angelic voice in a dream reached
into that cage encouraging to
him to shed the ragged coat and mask that confused
everyone even himself and “
Don’t let the darkness rule you.. let go and let that
authentic voice within surface
and just let the wind and the river take you
where you need to go.”
That caged bird mysteriously was released and
he was last seen singing up a
storm as he let go… sanctified, soaring somewhere.
Paradise? Some say
he was finally getting it right
……JF Sobecki
Autumn Poem
In the last jovial, clear-sky days of autumn
the mockingbird
in his monk-gray coat
and his arrowy wings
flies
from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing — but it's neither loose, nor lilting, nor lovely —
it's more like whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges.
All birds are birds of heaven
but this one, especially, adores the earth so well
he would imitate, for half the day and on into the
evening,
its ticks and wheezings,
and so I have to wait a long time
for the soft, true voice
of his own glossy life
to come through,
and of course I do.
I don't know what it is that makes him, finally, look
inward
to the sweet spring of himself, that mirror of heaven,
but when it happens —
when he lifts his head
and the feathers of his throat tremble,
and he begins, like Saint Francis,
little flutterings and leapings from the pine's forelock,
resettling his strong feet each time among the branches,
I am recalled,
from so many wrong paths I can't count them,
simply to stand, and listen.
All my life I have lived in a kind of haste and darkness
of desire, ambition, accomplishment.
Now the bird is singing, but not anymore of this world.
And something inside myself is fluttering and leaping, is
trying
to type it down, in lumped-up language,
in outcry, in patience, in music, in a snow-white book.
