Poetry by our Sister Sheila Reilly, IHM

Earthen Vessels

The potter works patiently at the wheel to form a thing of beauty. Be he truly an artist, his creation has certain qualities which make it his master-piece. But what had to happen before he is able to out the form, the grace, the beauty?

Rocks

Eons ago there was a stone age. How did one survive the cave? Seemingly eons ago there was the stone age of my heart. What could break up the rocks of selfishness, of indifferences of evil? Who could entice me out of the dark, cold cave? Who would teach me that only if I drag those boulders out where the elements can work their miracles will they ever become the soil to support life, the clay of which men form the utensils necessary for living?

Somehow, the teachers were there in the persons and the events which began to shape my life. Thought I failed to notice, God had a plan. And so the sunlight of His love went to work in the crucible His frost with a heat fanned by the wind of the spirit my stubbornness. The disciplined rain and snow of His grace worked their wonders. In spite of all my resistance, cracks began to show and, almost without my being aware, the boulders became stones. The stones in continued disintegration became the beginnings of the potter’s clay.

Clay

Without time, suffering, and the touch of the alchemist to blend in minerals for color and to pulverize and soften what had once been hard and unyielding, I could never have become that lump of elementary stuff with which the potter works. Too many years of being a stone would have stood in the way of His working with me. And the time in between when I was broken and fragmented would have ruled out the possibility that I could be made into something worthwhile. But season followed season and the transformation proceeded according to the Plan. Finally, I am ready. I am the clay the master Potter will work.

The Pot

Mixing – How does the clay become the pot? It is thrown with force on a wheel which is constantly turning. What does this say to me about the process which is my life? It hurts to be thrown but just setting me on the wheel with delicacy wouldn’t result in a durable, much less a beautiful vessel. An so I am thrown, and perhaps thrown again and again until the potter is pleased with the way I am secured and centered.

My room look out upon a view
Others might find unduly limiting.

Where another knows the glory of the sun’s rising,
Or bathes in crimson as it sets
I revel in each new dawn’s gift of surprise.
You mountain challenges pilgrim me
To journey always ever and ever upward
On pathways leading to the skies.

I revel in the gifts of dawn’s surprise.

To awake refreshed each morn to try the trails anew.

A Rose Full Blown

There is a special thing
About a rose full blown:
Wide in welcome to His Will,
Aroma – cased in giftedness of grace
Here is readiness to yield the secret
Long folded in shy bud beauty.
Revealed now midst unfurled petals
Lies the treasure that gives meaning to it all.
Your presence, Lord, at heart.

Sabbatical Search

What was is, Sarah, you came seeking
in this boundless prairie space:          
ledge of pause? shelf on granite rock?
breath for further climbing?
Perhaps yours a plain for indecision
needed as the journey’s path unfolds?

However varied quest has been
treasure close to surface lay in wait
ore – richness longing to be mined.
Self it was that you uncovered,
Self, perhaps, till now ignored.
Buried with it, surely you discovered
warmth of love and ever deeper reaching
into gift and Giver; into ground of being;
into final questing:
How will worthless ego find herself in God?

With apology to Augustine
wide is the wandering that moves away from God;
Deep is the gulf that separates from Love;
Heavy is the sleep and slowly comes awakening
when one would _____ comfort seek
in soft and downy half-life,
wake me, Lord, too long away: late came?

It huts to wake ____ the dawn, to face a morning chill.
Awareness makes like real again, exacts its cost ___ pain
revives anew the angst if toleration.
Once one had pricked a pinhole in mystery’s opaque vail
comes confirmation, Lord, I need not more,
that late came my response to Lord.

                                                            1907

On Becoming Word

My longing is to become you,
And so I oft repeat: Jesus,
Let all that is you flow into me,
But before that Diving infusions
can come about, all that is me
Must be siphoned off
a space made ready.

Yet self fears that so fragile a vessel
Once made empty for your coming
Will fall in upon itself, ___ shattered
Become unable to receive the flow.

Peace, my soul. You were not made
to melt into your Creator.
Yours it is to be
Another manifestation of Her beauty
yours to have Her say again
It is good!

Jesus, let all that is you flow into me.
May your body and blood be my food and drink;
May your passion and death be my life and my strength
Jesus, with you by my side, enough has been given.
May the shelter I seek be the shadow of your cross;
Let me not run from the love that you offer.
But keep me safe from the forces of evil.
On each of my dyings shed your light and your love
and keep calling me until that day
with your saints I may praise you
Forever and ever, Amen.

The bird I watch outside my window
Is there just for you, my God.
Perched precariously
She rides on swaying pine branch
_____ ________ _________ backdrops of cloud

Is it the Spirit’s breath that shakes the bough?
And why this branch and no others?
Happy where God wills her now,
She praises you with play
Nor is there need for ____ of brother.

When will my friendly wren, feeling inner urge,
Desert this lower limb and moving upward
Fortitude – staying power
God comes in working clothes
—with her tools — sandpaper

Come to rest on other God _______ height?
If she be there just for you, my God
T’will only be when time is right.

To Live in the Heart

The question on each of our minds on returning on January 15, 2006 was: “Do you believe in miracles?” For indeed the perfect planning that readied the Marian Convent Sister for relocation in Our Lady of Peace Residence had in it the substance of the miraculous. Such perfection demanded celebration and thanks to God. He had demonstrated His love for us and proclaimed His favor. Our response continues to hank as we try to image His love in our love for Him. Does He seem to have exceeded His own reach? But that is human pondering — and who can know God?

Looking back over a long life as a Sister, Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I personally can savour the honor of having been called to be a handmaid of the Lord. It evoked wonder being chosen for a special discipleship and even greater winder that, enabled by the gift of His grace. I have followed Him for the past seventy plus years and am now part of a group entrusted with a special prayer ministry. However a question still remains for each of us: the really aged and the manifestly helpless – and I ask myself who qualifies for assisted living?

I proceed into the unaccustomed luxury of our new apartments knowing that “this is the day the Lord has made” and that “we are to rejoice and to be glad in it.” While I continue to live in preparation for the promised kingdom to come.

Our homilist recently dealing a second time with Jesus’ calming of the wind and the waves said something like, “I thought I had given you my heart the first time – so what remains to be said?”

I too thought that on profession of vows I had given my heart. But there always is more until like the pierced heart of Jesus, my heart yields its last drops of water with its blood. Development into integrity funds me yet a mere youth. I still have much to master in the offering. That truth has come to me with measured gait and in the miniscule portions I have been capable of assimilating at any stage of the journey.

Yes it took time to acquire the humility to renounce all ownership of virtue and to acknowledge that growth in holiness is God’s project, not mine.

And now we have reached another juncture in the road and once again a demand for choice of behavior.

If before, the name of the game was progress, it now becomes endurance. And that means divesting myself of the sinful pride which continues to make the discipline of humility a special battle for me. That it remains so even at an advanced age seems to be God’s will for my salvation.

It would seem then that there is but one option for me: commitment! But having said that, the demand for choice becomes one that extends to what remains of my life. The highway will cut through the brief distances I can see while the possibility remains of miles to go to eternity.

To what then am I pledging myself in extending the vowed offering to commitment with its implicit finality?

At the ritual for reception into the Congregation those many years ago a hymn’s words asked us, “Daughter, wilt thou give thy heart?” That all-important query goes on repeating itself in my heart. I see now that I have been permitted a relational unity with the Trinity; that the bridal attire of then was a valid symbol of my union with my God. Together with my added years I now have in John S. D_____’s words: “The eyes to see the light and the heart to love God.”  – with all my strength, with all my heart, and that “God is on both sides of the relationship.”

Yes, He is truly all around me in all of my human companionship, as He is in me urging me to the action that will bring me home – when HE wills it! What a comforting message for all of us!!

Dwelling Place

“Here I am living in a house of cedar while the ark of God dwells in a tent.”   2 Sm. 7:2

With David would I work to build a temple
Worthy to enshrine the mystery which is God.
But Her’s are not the way of earthy rulers,
God’s thoughts run ever counter-wise to ours.

She thinks in terms of wide horizons.
Diving plans tend to megasize.
A tent is mete to house great Splendor;
To enclose a space wherein a God resides.

A tent is simple, moveable, God-fashioned
to be a dwelling place of love.
Tents travel well upon the journey.
Canvas folds to micro at the call of God.

And so the Lord took up His dwelling
In the bosom of a maiden, simple—she
He pitched His tent not on castle acres,
But in the desert place of holy solitude.

David’s dream and wished for splendor
Re-echoes in soul’s fabric rough as mine.
Help me, Lord, to weave a sturdy canvas
To en-tent the space you chose to be your own.

An angel, God’s will proclaimed
then waited for a handmaid bowed assent
Preserved she was that heaven’s wondrous story
be magnified by one of fallen race
God drenched and bud shy, graced
beyond her kin
Mary welcomed carrying the Christ within

God’s call to every mortal is ____
to His everlasting begetting of His
only Son on This Day of Salvation
and so it is owes to share _______ forever in
His IHM
Think on the terrible meaning of
any human “no” to His gift of
freedom.

Can any sorrow measure to such guilt?
Help me, Lord, to in company with His mother
to magnify and to rejoice to the _____
degree of a human’s understanding
to give you glory, glory, glory.

Compassion

Break open my heart, O Lord,
Make it feel your pain:
The searing suffering of rejection,
The hungry ache of loneliness,
The barrenness of alienation,
The uncomfort of being different,
The bite of poverty in all its forms.

But, more meaningfully, Lord
Teach me what it means:
To live in the skin of another,
To have my belly scream at emptiness,
To have nowhere to lay my head,
To feel the sting of icy wind or naked flesh,
To view your world from prison bars
To stand mute and tearless at a child’s dead body.

Understanding thus that to be human is to suffer
Then shall my sleeping ego – chained heart
Awake and quicken to a beat of life renewed
Then, beyond all certainty I shall know
That I am a member of the Body of Christ.
For when the suffering of another
Has power to melt my heart of stone
Then indeed shall I have learned to love.

All is Gift

My God, You have seduced me
with gifts that scoff at cost
for who would dare a value to assign
to gift that Infinite Wisdom chooses to bestow?

Were one to strive to reach a ranking
Divine decision one would have to seek
Would faith’s claim head such listing?
—Or would the honor go to will?

Faith, by accident, is not possibility
for Your giving consults a plan divine
which prefaces belief by Your arrangement.
No, faith is parented by relationship
sprung from the mind of God.

For endurance, will deserves consideration.
Once You grant it, never do You change Your mind.
Mortal may improperly employ it,
then Your choice will be writ in straightened lines.

Love,
Today is all I have to spend to purchase grace;
Investment of each hour can treasure buy,
if I with searching hand and reaching eye
would penetrate earth’s spread of baubles.
Lead my search, Lord, downward
to my own reality.
Let me know the sharp edge
of my lowliness, my creature hood.
For only when I understand my
utter poverty, my lack of ownership.
Will wisdom govern choice.
Teach me to use the treasures
of Your grace;
Not to squander what your
prodigality bestows
Teach me something of your bounty
that the _____ love I offer in return
poor offering of this poor one
will be enriched by Him who died
of love for us.

Why me?

You spread the table before me…
As you spread it for my foes.
Its fine linen, crystal, silver flat-ware,
are yet another declaration of Your love.|
Now my daily bread becomes a banquet.
My food is fit for – and IS God
why me, Lord? Why my soul you choose to feed?

Yours is a love that has to find me;
Finding you is not within my power.
I can give you thanks for searching
yet I must know responding comes from you.
To voice unutterable truth of my unworthy
but demonstrates my poverty of speech.
Grant me further depth to plumb to meaning.

I would fourfold times be anointed
I would drink from cup of Blood Divine.
I would be the Body that You offer
I would ever at your feast recline,
over knowing I must brave dark ____.
Having first fed on you, my Lord
in _____ confidence I look to final coming home.

Mystic Contentment

My retreat room looks out upon a view
Others may have found too limiting.
Though they know the glory of sun’s rising,
Or are bathed in crimson as it sets,
I revel in the dawn’s potential for surprise.
Your mountain is a challenge to a pilgrim
To keep the journey ever pointed upward
On oft times tangled pathways to the skies.

Were I to wander up the twisted trails,
What, I wonder, would leaf darked gloom reveal
Of secrets to confound a seeking soul
Involved in becoming Truth and losing self.
Perhaps the mystic buried deep within
Freed of ego contemplation would unearth
Treasures of your freely given love
In quantity to beggar dreams of wealth.

Oh yes, some may own a wider vision;
Have panorama spread out to their very gaze.
Favored they, aye richly gifted
With sun’s first and, yes, his latest rays.
E’en so I would not choose to leave
My Spirit in dictated place to gain another view.
Content am I to contemplate the mountain
To wake refreshed each morn to brave the trail anew.