Category Archives: All Things Catholic

Smiling Eyes

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Lying in the sunshine of Your love,
Recounting humming bird days,
Flitting as flashes flung to the heavens,
I look to the horizon,
For the rising of yet another sun.

I feel I know You.
It is me I doubt,
But I don’t know why.
I have spent my life
Becoming what I think
You want me to be.
Others, though, have always
Seemed to do it better.

Here I am at eve tide,
Recounting the many waters,
That wash these shores.
Your Beauty plays for me,
Painting the setting sun;
I guess, to reassure my clay
Of The Love You are,
As I still look for me,
Reflected in Your smiling eyes.

copyright 2014 Joann Nelander

Father Forever

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“Father forgive them they know not what they do.”

Cords of sorrow draw me.
I am witness to the plight,
Man become beast,
Without wisdom or wit,
Licking his own blood,
Hungry, harrowed,
Stunned in horror.

The knots of revenge entangle,
Cry for evermore blood,
Ever more abasement,
Ever more widows,
Ever more orphans,
Ever more refuse and waste.

A crying child becomes hundreds,
Then thousands,
Then millions,
Left to wander,
Left to dissipate and hate.

Vengeance is sweeter than food,
To one who chooses to live
Without Love,
Without Light,
Without the Holy and the True,
For such is the abode of Sin,
And many the roads
Leading to its gate.

Bestial brutality,
Raging insanity,
Now reigns the malignant.
The disconsolate refuse all solace,
Wounds of the heart,
Wounds of the mind,
Wounds of the body of Man.

Look to the high mountain,
Eyes to the heavens,
Wake the long dead,
Who await the promised Banquet,
Those, who now know,
They are one Family of Man,
Divested of tribal allegiance,
Awaiting the One,
And coming, King.

Offer a sacrifice of prayer.
Pour forth the balm of Gilead.
Speak, in the tongue of angels,
The comfort of peoples,
Hope in the Darkness.

Humanity’s ties are stronger than its sins,
More numerous than the cords
That draw it down in the Dark Night.
For its One God
Is Father Forever.

Wisdom, Come

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Wisdom, come sit beside me.
Come, quiet my soul with Your whisper of peace.
Come, with heavenly companionship.
Come and remain, all my life long.
Wisdom, come here beside me.

Copyright 2015 Joann Nelander

I Listened as a Tulip Spoke

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I listened as a tulip spoke.
Perched on her podium,
She sat in Your sunshine,
There upon my table,
Her feet wet upon stones,
Emersed from crystalline life.
No tongue could speak such eloquence.
How stately and sincere.

Earlier she had bowed low,
Her back broken,
Unable to lift her head or eyes to heaven,
But, now, she sings in colorful delight.
Her tones strum my heart’s ear.
Spritely, she smiles for having her fill
From fountains that rushed
To quench her thirst.

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She looks at You,
And preaches me a homily
Of prismatic delicacy,
And beauteous design.
Her eyes reach to finger my spirit
With the flash of black on gold,
Your Love written in her petals
Sing to my soul.

©2016 Joann Nelander

Savior’s Repose

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My dearest Mother,
Take my outstretched hand.
And accompany me,
From moment to moment,
From love of God,
To loving Him evermore purely,
That I may be a heavenly garden,
A place for the Savior’s repose,
In the midst of my everyday,
Until the angels carry me home.

copyright 2015 Joann Nelander

Joann Nelander
lionessblog.com

You are the Music

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Jesus, write the symphony of my life.
In Your Mystery of becoming,
Blend every note,
And sing the harmony
That embraces the sinner
To create the saint.

You are here
With the Father and Holy Spirit,
Supping and residing,
I receive You in Holy Communion,
Grant that I might never neglect You,
My Holy Guests.

I place You on the music stand of my life.
You are the Score,
And Conductor.

All I receive, I give
On the wind of the Spirit,
To be rightly arranged.
You be the music playing in my soul.

In chorus, Seraphim and Saints intercede,
And I and all creation dance with Miriam
As Jesus mediates the Victory
In His Song of Salvation.

© 2015 Joann Nelander