April is poetry month, a time to read a poem by a poet you’ve never heard of. This April I discovered Wong May. Born in Singapore, she came to the United States for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and received a Master of Arts from the University of Iowa. Married to a physics professor she now lives in Dublin.
In her poem “Waiting for God,” she writes: he looks oddly familiar/& is always on his way./Coming nearer/he looks like me. In truth, does not God look oddly familiar? And, for sure God does look like us.
As we come closer to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, which will happen next week, we wonder what the people of Jerusalem were waiting for -- a prophet to speak of the future of Jerusalem, a sadly divided city, but now the oppressors are not the Romans.
As we think of Jesus entering Jerusalem today, what would we the onlookers, expect?
Prayer for the Day
Created in your image, O God, may we look like you,
Even in a world of violence and death caused by war;
Created in your image, O God, may we act as you,
Bringing hope to those who cry out for justice.
Created in your image, O God, help us to comfort the afflicted,
And afflict those who cause evil and death.
In the name of the One who shows us how to be your image,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundation for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.
- Audre Lorde, poet and writer
Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.
- Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian poet, Nobel Prize in Literature 1959 (1901-1968)
God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.
Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.
For God is the monarch over all the earth, sing praises with a psalm.
Psalm 47: 5-7