Month: January 2021

A Common-Place Jotting: In Dir Ist Freude

Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember

http://www.hymntime.com/tch

Written by Johann Lindemann in 1598, “In Dir Ist Freude” (“In Thee is Gladness”) was translated from the German by Catherine Winkworth almost three hundred years later. Winkworth was a pioneer in promoting women’s rights as well as promoting women’s higher education. Johann Lindemann was one of the signers of the Lutheran Formula of Concord, and served often as a cantor in various churches in his native Germany. The hymn is often performed using J.S. Bach’s arrangement.

In Thee is Gladness              

In thee is gladness amid all sadness,
Jesus, sunshine of my heart!
By thee are given the gifts of heaven,
thou the true redeemer art!
Our souls thou wakest, our bonds thou breakest,
who trusts thee surely hath built securely,
and stands forever: Hallelujah!
Our hearts are pining to see thy shining,
dying or living to thee are cleaving,
naught can us sever: Hallelujah!

If he is ours, we fear no powers,
nor of earth, nor sin, nor death.
He sees and blesses in worst distresses;
he can change them with a breath.
Wherefore the story, tell of his glory,
with heart and voices all heav’n rejoices
in him forever: Hallelujah!
We shout for gladness, triumph o’er sadness,
love thee and praise thee,
and still shall raise thee
glad hymns forever: Hallelujah!

Continue reading “A Common-Place Jotting: In Dir Ist Freude”

Broken

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

I am one of those who stands amazed at how good we Americans are at hating each other. (An article I read in Tablet Magazine sums it up pretty well.) We aren’t completely broken as a nation, but we’re getting there — and fast, thanks to the usual suspects who stand to profit from our wounds.

Doomed with seeds of death
Larvae in the heart of the nation
Infecting as we feed
Tenacious in our sanctimony
Pauciloquent in offering peace
Grandiloquent in stirring discord
Blind worms blindly devouring
Hope, love, understanding,
Inflicting pain in a fractured society
Never as fervent for another’s dignity
As for ourselves, trampling harmony
Freedom to disagree without fear
Never overcoming what we are
Broken by prideful venom
At the core of every human heart.

“Avoid going entirely tree-blind,” writes the author of the article above. “Make a friend and don’t talk politics with them. Do things that generate love and attention from three people you actually know instead of hundreds you don’t.”

#WWP (73 words, "tenacious"); #WOTD ("pauciloquent")

When Dreams Come True

Genre: Fiction/ Word Count: 100

When Dreams Come True

     Holding tightly to her mother’s hand, the little girl looked upon the figure in the casket.
     “Did Appappan* really die preaching?” she whispered.
     Her mother nodded. “He always said he would.”
     Behind them hundreds had gathered to pay their respects.
     Later, the girl sat in her granddad’s study, thumbing through his notes, tracing the leather cracks on his Bible.
     A favorite hymn bubbled up from within her. She started to sing, feeling as if a choir of angels were joining her.
     That night she announced, “I want to die singing, Mummy, like Appappan died preaching!”
     Many years later, she did.

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

*”Appappan” is southern Indian for grandfather

Written for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields' Friday Fictioneers
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Not a Mirror

Photo by Drigo Diniz from Pexels

This is not a mirror
Ground silica back-silvered
A labyrinth to unravel your soul
But splintered fragmentation
Of all your expectations
A story to re-glue and emboss.

This is not a mirror
Portal to another world
Left-handed universe
Turnabouts of phantoms
A touch on your shoulder
That welt on your cheek.

This is not a mirror
It is an owl’s feather
A rat’s tail, a torn page
Blood of jilted lover
The sigh of an empress
Dethroned by endless war.

This is not a mirror, a mirror, a mirror.

For Dverse, Mish's Poetics: Object Poems "This is not ..."
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Reverie

Seated Woman, 1915 by Rik Wouters (1882-1916)

Time rebounds in dabs of paint
Watery sun soaks through space
Sensations blur
Colors seep
Diminishing lines
Reflections slur
Your hands, your face
Gaze untendered
Unbristled, still
A warm attention
Encompassing all
Formidable will
Probing memory
Dark sublime
Time rebounds in dabs of paint.

Written for D'verse, WhimsyGizmo's Quadrille (44 words)
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Phantasm

What cloistered walls ruminate upon
stirring phantasms where shadows abound
impaled upon pitchforks wrought
by their own sentimental celebrations.

So one shadow lingers restlessly
beyond a lichen-covered gate,
a dewy-eyed dreamer planning her escape
lured by a letter found in a copse.

“Nothing bad but what you make of it,
nothing good but what you sing of it;
from your secluded rooms now venture,
meet me beyond the trees and by water.”

Picking it up, she had clutched the letter
fondly to her breast as if from a lover
that in her mind’s eye she could clearly see,
a handsome Lothario, her knight in armor.

Photo by Timur Kozmenko from Pexels (for Sadje’s #WDYS)

So she skipped lightly down the dark lane
spinning castles-in-air to sounds melodious
and as she emerged from beyond the trees
her Lothario she spied in his dungarees.

artbyrandy at Morguefile (Fandango’s #FFC 100)

From reality she spun about and fled
back to her haunt, her daydreams to recover
and in her hands lay flowers he proffered
a lesson learned from a fanciful endeavor.

Linda's #JusJoJan "letter"; Di's #TTC "planning, sing, bad";
Kristian's #WOTD "picking"; Michelle's #WritingPrompts, "sentimental celebrations"

Ginger Lily

If I could send scent waves over the ether, I’d tell you to take a deep breath and smell the sweet scent of the ginger lily!

Ginger Lily for Cee’s FOTD

John 1:3-4
All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Continue reading “Ginger Lily”

Twisted

Twisted is just what I got juggling Linda’s #JusJoJan (“twisted”), Michelle’s #JanuaryWritingPrompt (“cannibalizing airframes”), Melanie’s #WOTD (“jentacular”), and Di’s #Take Seven (“add, all, basic, being, bit, determined, hidden, knew, lean, lurking, measured, more, show, sneer, started, there, tin, tired, treat, wobble, work”). Whew! Here’s what I ended up with.

Photo by Chevanon Photography from Pexels

It was very hush-hush. The servants kept at their WORK, starting with their JENTACULAR* routines, putting on a SHOW for all the houseguests, DETERMINED to keep them away from the HIDDEN runways and hangars where their fancy aircraft were stored. The servants KNEW more than they let on about the TWISTED, seamy affairs among the guests and BEING discreet acted MORE or less ignorant of it ALL. But they were TIRED of being TREATed with that hint of a SNEER that the upper-classes didn’t bother to hide. Once in a while, a guest would express an interest in checking up on their plane, but there was always a butler or an under-butler or housemaid LURKING THERE to sound the alarm, and soon the guest would be diverted with a TIN of something savory or a MEASURED warning by a LEAN threatening native. ADD in a BIT of theatrics, and the guest’s knees would WOBBLE in alarm as they retreated. The servants had STARTED their own enterprise in this neglected corner of the world where so many starved while others jetted in and out of their massive estates. Their enterprise was pretty BASIC. They were cannibalizing airframes off the luxury jets of their guests and selling them to dealers around the world. And thanks to the increasing number of millionaires, it was a thriving business.

*jentacular –“means just about anything related to breakfast.“