XCV-CI

XCV.

Three nights predicted snow does not arrive,
an anticlimax ev’ry waking morn.
Successive storms of which we are forewarned
appear to suffer from a lack of drive.

Tonight, they say, the hammer finally falls.
The school has cancelled, and most churches too.
What is our little parish here to do?
The bell for our Ash Wednesday worship calls.

We gather for a hot and simple meal,
confess our sin, receive the ashes blest,
return to Christ in both our woe and weal.

The Sacrament consumed, we beat retreat
to hunker in our homes and safely rest,
the howling of the wind now sounding sweet.


XCVI.

I gave up buying books and games for Lent
along with hats and most things for myself.
But two days in, there’s money I’d have spent
on Kickstarter to fill my crowded shelf.

I also gave up sweets (that standard fare)
returning to a sonnet once a day,
and reaffirmed our fam’ly ev’ning prayer
to foster all our children on the Way.

The beer I can’t in conscience quite forsake;
it holds a pride of place in Western fasts.
Not that I need excuses to partake,
perhaps a bit to supplement repasts.

This season frees us from our endless greed,
the appetites and egos which we feed.


XCVII.

I married this Norwegian long ago
and settled in the frozen northern waste,
a neighborly yet harsh and hardy place,
now home, which I have come to love and know.

Some Stoicism, grit, and Jante’s Law
will take you through the worst of winter’s reign
until the storms of summer come again.
It’s six hard months before we see the thaw.

In movies, novels, music here you find
a permeating sense of Nordic dread
as windows to the Scandinavian mind:

implacability of Nature’s state;
defiance of a world that wants us dead;
inexorable the glacial tide of Fate.


XCVIII.

One thing about the clergy overlooked
is how we earn our livelihood by pen.
Two sermons weekly soon fills up a book
and ev’ry Monday starts it all again.

The articles and letters that we write,
the classes that we teach for ev’ry age.
Through pencil, pen, or laptop glowing bright
we burn through reams of paper page by page.

Performance pieces polished terse and tight
with practiced cadence and delib’rate tone;
enacted in a single day or night,
remembered if at all by us alone.

As Buddhist monks their sand mandalas shed
the cleric births an art abruptly dead.


XCIX.

A proper part of any true retreat
appears to be the struggle to arrive.
A pilgrim must present himself alive
to grace the Holy Land beneath his feet.

This morning started off with finest mist
to settle as a glaze across the land
and make the drive more hazardous than planned
as winter still refuses to desist.

I took the route more slowly than my wont
and wove between an accident or three,
the weather and I calling a détente.

By noon I’d gathered with my Order’s priests,
half-dozen having braved this Odyssey.
As our reward, the world behind us ceased.


C.

A life is built on choices and their cost.
When I was young, I sought the harder path,
chose challenges without much thought to math,
or how the years would tally all I’d lost.

I could have had a lucrative career
or one with lesser stress and greater fame.
Instead I blew upon that inner flame
to burn alive my restlessness and fear.

Should I have done the MD, PhD,
Divinity at Harvard or at Yale?
Would having healthy income set me free?

Or would I yet have yearned to range and roam
regardless of the risk it has entailed?
Our recklessness has built this hardy home.


CI.

A table with but one remaining chair,
a sofa which no longer can recline,
a fridge duct-taped together ev’rywhere,
the rusted out old minivan is mine.

Dishwasher’s heating implement has broke.
The dresser’s missing here a drawer or two.
It’s been a decade since my suit’s bespoke.
No matter how we work, there’s more to do.

I know that much of this is simply life,
but all these years performing with no net
can add a grim resolve to ev’ry strife.
I haven’t found my breaking point quite yet.

Just trying to keep hearth and home afloat
can ram humility right down your throat.