While I Pray

Katie I. Philbrick (1856-1928), my mother’s grandmother, whose own mother, Patience Mayhew DeMaranville, was a daughter of Gilbert and Catherine (Tilton) Mayhew of Martha’s Vineyard, kept her first husband’s name even after marrying my grandmother’s father (Frederick E. Potter), because, no doubt, of the strict religious upbringing which would have frowned heavily on remarriage after divorce even in a case of abandonment. In the family her second marriage was thought to have never formally occurred, even though all the children had the surname Potter, until a few years ago my uncle found a note of it, citing date and place, in my great-grandfather’s military records in the National Archives. In her declining years she lived with her daughter (my grandmother) and grandchildren. She eventually became blind, but continued to write poetry. One day a traveling evangelist, Barney Warren, who was also a prolific songwriter, visited for a short time and set one of her poems to music, probably also adding the refrain. The poem itself was first published by the Gospel Trumpet Company in the Gospel Trumpet (periodical) March 29, 1923, and later as a song (the first four stanzas only) in Melodies of Zion and also in Hymns And Spiritual Songs, with a copyright notice of 1926 under the name of B. E. Warren. Her name as lyricist was listed as Kate T. Philrick, incorporating two errors on the part of the editor.

While I Pray

by Katie I. Philbrick

While I pray the clouds about me
Are transformed to red and gold,
And each raindrop has a message
From my Saviour yet untold;
Songs burst forth in midnight darkness,
Lights from glory round me play,
All is changed like wondrous magic—
Earth to heaven, while I pray.

While I pray the angels linger
Near me, for they fain would be
Witness of the joy in sorrow,
Strength in weakness giv’n to me;
And my shield, all worn and battered
In the fierceness of the fray,
Glows afresh with heav’nly luster
And protects me while I pray.

While I pray my friends seem fonder
As I ask for each a boon,
And in loving faith I ponder
And expect an answer soon;
And the cares that so beset me
Steal unnoticed quite away,
Leaving only purest comfort
Of God’s presence, while I pray.

O the joy of bowing lowly
Often at the mercy-seat,
Healing favor, radiant glory,
Views of Jesus’ face so sweet!
And tho’ trouble come, or sadness,
I will trust him all the way,
And my heart will throb with gladness,
Praise and rapture, while I pray.

When I reach the flowing river,
Gazing on the darksome tide,
Nothing then shall daunt my spirit—
For my Lord the way has tried.
As my eyes are softly closing
All the sights of earth away,
I shall pass in sweet contentment—
Pass on gently, while I pray.

Refrain:
While I pray, while I pray,
God will surely answer
In his own way;
While I pray, while I pray,
He will surely answer
While I pray.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem

By James Henry Leigh Hunt

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made all of  sweet accord
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!

Snip

Full year and more the treadmill race I run
spewing the words and numbers though my voice is silent.
I speak, I write such brilliance and such grace
as ghosts can muster faceless in the glass.

My eloquence is bold with other voices
but mute I stand in speechless self defence
clawing the air with futile scraping motions
no strength of flesh to scream with. Such is my genius.

philosophickal fragments

A fragment from the paper archives. Not going to back-date this one, though it probably belongs in the period prior to 2001.

(The poet discourses with the reductionist…)

you ask is there meaning in my roundup of these words
that is to say is the tapping of my fingerkeys of eternal value or does it reveal in its own way truth
or is it perhaps the remnant of excessive youth?

Okay mr wiseguy, that’s what you think
that there is no truth extractable from a long cool drink
because you think all truth is scientific
and cannot conceive the extent of the horrific
reaction such a narrow reductionist view
can have on my personal opinion of you.

Gossamer Bridges Revisited

Building
weaving webwork
stringing lines that connect
impossible adhesions;
the weaver does her work
upon the wind, God knows what design,
what plan is taking shape.
Tireless weaving, a full year,
brought forth a bridge suspended in midair
but strong, a place to stand and weave more strands.

One weaves, two dance in weaving, more are caught
(but not for feeding)
we dance upon the wind, we are woven, we are weaving;

God knows what new design we are conceiving.

Love is many things to many people

Love is many things to many people;
to some, it is a yearning for an unknown joy
an ideal girl or an ideal boy
to others, the comfort of familiar faces
doing pleasant things in predictable places.
To others yet again, love leaps beyond the known
embracing all from pit to holy throne;
another sees in love the voice of need fulfilled
as keys love locks, as milk loves being spilled.

Love is desire, love is greed, love is pleasure, love is need.
All these are love, but love loves none of these
for love is born where death is, and disease.
Love wills the new, the unthought and unsaid.
It heals the sick and raises up the dead.
It brings impossibilities in view,
revives the old, and sanctifies the new.
Love waits forever on the slimmest chance;
it celebrates each promise with a dance.

The world itself will wither and will die,
but love will live, and so will you and I.

Another Story

Once upon a time a certain ogre decided he wanted something new for dinner. Now his usual fare was your basic beef, mutton, venison or bear with snacks of chipmunk and squirrel; but he started to wonder about the rare delicacy he had once heard a great-uncle rhapsodize about, namely “human”.

On The Occasion Of A Computer Program Beating Two Grandmasters At Chess

On The Occasion Of A Computer Program Beating Two Grandmasters At Chess

We are lower life-forms.
We’re second rate!
It’s evolution baby
As of this date

Man’s worst agonies

A bit of doggerel, really…. very old

Man’s worst agonies

And why in this world of passing shame
where numbers more than names
tell stories, though a million silent ears
may listen, no one hears
for nothing’s said when everything is equal.

A thousand grasping hands
Reach for bleached sweet nothing
Stick in harmless goo
that eats away their fingers like a poison

What noise! What clamor! Everywhere
Young voices rising strong with prophecies,
The wisdom born of years
Providing many comfortable fears
New fantasies with artificial tears
Replace the thousand sorrows of the faceless
headless, soulless crowd that we all see
But none of them (oh horrors!) could be me.

So is your brother
Just like you, another
Unknown, silent scream
Within the muffled cry of agony
This painful planet earth
Ha doomed itself to be.

Somewhere
A joy beyond all hope resides
Beyond the last despair, a new surprise.
A truth more subtle than a thousand lies
Lurks, forgotten quite, but yet may rise
To quench the fires of man’s worst agonies.

Sunshine
An hour of light and silent liberty
Between the iron darknesses
Which in black flames of fears, despair and cursings
Are forged into the chains which bind all men.

To such a world of darkness, flame and cursings,
Came the Son, pure light unquenchable
Who brought into the clamor of despair
A holy stillness, by his dying cry
And promise, hope and blessing entered in
To penetrate the very fetters formed
Bu sufferings He shared with all those bound
And causing light and silent liberty
To enter even iron darknesses
And not be chained thereby.

Poem 5-5-92

today 5 may, on a cloudy day, while the tulips are in bloom,
i sit alone with the god of heaven in a cluttered room.
An optimist they say i am; impractical, extreme,
telling to riot and hatred and distrust my honest theme,
which is that God (a funny word), who shirks not from disaster,
has named the vanquished Innocent his anointed and our Master.
Master – not as master to a fearful, thoughtless slave,
but one whose practice, skill, and patience let him pave
the way for us to learn from him what he both learned and taught;
to trust in God in everything.  This sickness i have caught,
And joyfully succumb, nor ever wish for healing,
because this trust brings forth the endless power of God revealing,
and revealing, and revealing, and revealing, and revealing, -
the power of hope that I am most ridiculously feeling:
the realm of absurd love, of concrete goodness, enfleshed spirit,
the word of truth proclaimed to all; if anyone will hear it.

The mind’s creation

The mind’s creation

• fantasy of beauty and of comfort

haunts the midnight wanderings

invades the daytime musings

grows and swells and swallows

its creator —

Such is the consequence

• for those who worship idols;
  images conceived and nurtured
  in the soul’s magic workroom.

True worship waits

• its patient steps unhurried
  until it finds the real
  unknown
  inspirer of dreams.

The idol-crafter says:

• I love the one I know not, but I cannot bear
  Not knowing that I love; I craft with care,
  therefore, an image of the thing I wish to know,
  And call it mine. And watch it grow.

And if the unknown – real – should come to me -

• I will not see.

Religion

—I am a potentiality—

  A preconscious sensation struggling to become a thought,

   A word,

  a sentence, paragraph, structured argument

It’s a strain on the synapses

but let me make the leap

God appeared to me,

A change in the chemical arrangement of my brain

Resulting from an action of the eternal Spirit.

The virgin birth is no more miraculous,

Biologically impossible,

Than this.  

 Not to see, and yet to believe, 

Is an electrochemical event

As momentous as placing my hand in His side.

 

The truth, someone said, is a Person

Known to have engaged at times  

in whimsy

in caprice

in marvelously arbitrary detail.

The good news is that the eternal living spirit

who is in no way material

can rearrange molecules.

This is miracle:

This is healing:

This is incarnation:

This is resurrection: 

This is life.

 

“Miracle is simply the religious word for event.”  —  F. Schleiermacher 

 

 This poem was written on lined yellow notebook paper in about 1985.  

Meditations after Seder on Maundy Thursday

Busy all day Thursday
Preparing Paschal
Lamb for slaughter
And one Lamb eats
knowing
beyond the garden
is prepared
in haste Death Angel’s smiting
of Him Who only
is Israel.
That city called spiritually Egypt
That night smote the firstborn
of YHWH Sabaoth.
Justice is complete.
Israel despoiled by Egypt:
They cast lots.
The baptism of deliverance
not in water but in blood
the Deliverer is not from this delivered.

When I see the blood, I will pass over you.
When you shall see the Blood, do not pass by.

Mirrors the Moon the image of the Sun

Mirrors the Moon the image of the Sun
Man-shaped; brilliant glory could not show
To dusty creatures perfectness of fire.
Consuming brightness worm of man might know
Reflected to the eyes of his desire
As his own image; then the work’s begun.

If purity of Light could stand unclad
Before the naked Man, and not consume
It would be done; but, Man-shaped, Light came down
Proclaiming Life to dust, and Death to doom,
For Nakedness a covering and a crown,
And sorrowing hearts, made pure, were then made glad.

A Shopgirl’s Christmas Eve

Anonymous; Printed in 1925 in the Philadelphia “Bulletin” — as memorized by E. F. Buehler (and inflicted annually on his family; thanks, Dad )

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the flat
Not a creature was stirrin’ – include me in that!
My stockings, a little the worse for tough wear,
Were flung o’er the back of a three-legged chair.
Outside snow was falling in beautiful flakes
But I didn’t care. I was too full of aches.
I’d worked in the store through the holiday strife
And was ready to sleep for the rest of my life.
When out in the airway there arose such a clatter
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
I thought for a moment ’twas the nut down one flight
Who starts up his radio late every night.
I ran to the window and loudly did cry,
“Is this Christmas Eve or the Fourth of July?”
When what to my astonished eyes did appear
But a dinky little sled and eight tiny reindeer
That seemed to be driving right up to my door
By one of those masquerade guys from the store.
I says to myself, “What can be this bird’s game?”
When he clucked to his reindeer and called them by name:
“Now Dasher, now Dancer, now Prancer and Vixen,
Up Comet, up Cupid, up Donner and Blitzen!”
And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof
The prancin’ and pawin’ of meat on the hoof.
I pulled in my bean and was tuning around
When down the chimney my visitor came with a bound.
A bag of junk on his back he displayed with a grin.
He acted as though he had come to move in.
A stump of a pipe graced his jaws as he spoke.
He said, “Got a match? Do you mind if I smoke?”
He had a – pardon me – belly
That shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.
He was jolly and fat and chock full of glee
But I ask you, dear reader, what was that to me?
The point I want to make, it was now two o’clock
And a man in my room without stopping to knock!
As I was thinking how nervy and lslick,
He says to me, “Lady, I’m only St. Nick.”
But a poor tired salesgirl’s in no mood for fun
So I gave him a look and asked him, “Which one”
As a Christmas rush shop girl, I’m sure you’ll agree
A lok at St. Nicholas is no big treat for me.
“This has gone far enough. this bunk’s got to stop.
Take the air with those goats or I’ll yell for a cop.”
Without a word, he turned to his work,
Filled up my stockings and turned with a jerk,
Laid a finger aside his red nose,
Gave a nod and up the chimney he rose.
“Merry Christmas!” he yelled as away his deer ran,
I just gave a yawn and said, “So’s you old man!“