Tag Archives: life

Fully Human, Fully Alive II

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When I worked in the NICU many years ago, I held a preemie that weighed less than 2 pounds  in my hand just like in this photo (inside an incubator , of course) It was so tiny and fragile.  I could see through its thin layer of skin. So amazing was this precious life!  It was fully human and fully alive, just very young gestationally.

You know, if I had simply clapped my hands, its little life would have been over.  Everyone would call me "a murderer."   Yet abortion does end such innocent lives every moment of every day, and no one is found gulity.

!

This is what we all looked like at 12 weeks in the womb. Legal to kill in all 50 states. Anyone think its not a person?

VIDEO of one of the smallest surviving infants.

Haunting Silence

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Time to name the monster
Who stirs at night.
Who lives within
To hide our sin.

Time to make room,
In memory’s caverns
Rather than banish
What simply won’t vanish.

You had a choice once
That gave birth to phantoms
Making you live your choice
Silencing not its voice.

The monster lives and grows
Curled and caved in your heart
When the Light goes out
It walks about.

Its countenance a disfigurement,
Frightful yet your own.
Its dwelling through the years
Fraught with reticence and tears.

Has it no right
No place of rest?
When the day is done,
No place in the sun.

Most monsters are but part
Of our fallen selves
Standing in the way
Of each new day.

The way out
Is also within.
Give the chimera a name.
Acknowledge its claim.

Give the silence life
For the living,
For what you kill,
Haunts you still.

Time to embrace
And wrap the past in Mercy.
Give it a womb,
Instead of a tomb.

©2012 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved

What the Catholic Vote Looks Like

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Argument for Size

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When we step on an ant,
An ant smaller than a fetus,
We acknowledge killing an ant.
We may not fret about it,
Afterall, it’s ant!
We have the right
To kill an ant.

When a mother, a doctor,
A nurse, a bio-scientist,
Or technician trained in the art,
When a society and a nation,

Curtails the life of a fetus,
All deny killing a human person.
“It’s too small to matter.”

Do we really believe,
We are doing good?
Do we care beyond
Convenience and profit,
Are we in the right?
Do we have the right?
How big does Truth have to be?

©2012 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved

Who Am I?

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Who Am I?
You, Father God,
Revealed Yourself
To Your servant Moses.
“I am Who Am. ”

You are existence
In uncreated simplicity
And immaterial totality.
My thoughts and knowledge
Are without substance or form,
A mystery of being,
An image of Your Essence.

My prayer is a begging
To shape the me of me
Into the Person of Your Son,
That my “I am,”
Be as You Are.

May what I will be
Take Life
In Your Only Begotten One,
To make me
Fit for Familial Love,
When mortal life be done.

Copyright Joann Nelander 2011

All rights reserved

Death is Strong – Love Stronger

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From a treatise by Baldwin, bishop of Canterbury

Love is as strong as death

Death is strong, for it can rob us of the gift of life. Love too is strong, for it can restore us to a better life.

Death is strong, for it can strip us of this robe of flesh. Love too is strong, for it can take death’s spoils away and give them back to us.

Death is strong, for no man can withstand it. Love too is strong, for it can conquer death itself, soothe its sting, calm its violence, and bring its victory to naught. The time will come when death is reviled and taunted: O death, where is your sting? O death, where is your victory?

Love is as strong as death because Christ’s love is the very death of death. Hence it is said: I will be your death, O death! I will be your sting, O hell! Our love for Christ is also as strong as death, because it is itself a kind of death: destroying the old life, rooting out vice, and laying aside dead works.

Our love for Christ is a return, though very unequal, for his love of us, and it is a likeness modeled on his. For he first loved us and, through the example of love he gave us, he became a seal upon us by which we are made like him. We lay aside the likeness of the earthly man and put on the likeness of the heavenly man; we love him as he has loved us. For in this matter he has left us an example so that we might follow in his steps.

That is why he says: Set me as a seal upon your heart. It is as if he were saying: “Love me as I love you. Keep me in your mind and memory, in your desires and yearnings, in your groans and sobs. Remember, man, the kind of being I made you; how far I set you above other creatures; the dignity I conferred upon you; the glory and honor with which I crowned you; how I made you only a little less than the angels and set all things under your feet. Remember not only how much I have done for you but all the hardship and shame I have suffered for you. Yet look and see: Do you not wrong me? Do you not fail to love me? Who loves you as I do? Who created and redeemed you but I?”

Lord, take away my heart of stone, a heart so bitter and uncircumcised, and give me a new heart, a heart of flesh, a pure heart. You cleanse the heart and love the clean heart. Take possession of my heart and dwell in it, contain it and fill it, you who are higher than the heights of my spirit and closer to me than my innermost self! You are the pattern of all beauty and the seal of all holiness. Set the seal of your likeness upon my heart! In your mercy set your seal upon my heart, God of my heart and the God who is my portion for ever! Amen.