Tag Archives: retreat
Sweetly Count Our Hours
Lord, I’ m offering You a new day.
Already, You know,
‘this isn’t going to be pretty.’
I count on You to do what You have always done.
Take the morsels which Your hand has touched.
As for the rest,
with one mighty exhalation of Holy Breath
Spirit the chaff away.
At day’s end,
as with all my yesterdays,
I will lay my head upon Your Breast,
and sweetly count our hours.
By Joann Nelander
I Dream of Heaven
Night and day, I dream of heaven.
O, not the dream that slumber brings,
that mirage that is tortuous,
with struggles and comings and goings,
jumbles and journeys
taking me far, far from home.
No, I speak now of the dream of my heart.
I dream of heaven, the cry of my heart.
With longing and yearning and surety of soul,
I labor in love for a home that I know.
Through all life’s long journey,
my days are replete
with a pilgrim’s desire,
that sheds light ‘to my feet.
Though weary, and broken, I no longer doubt,
That all heaven is waiting to welcome with shout,
one miserable sinner, it can’t do without.
By Joann Nelander
Sweetly Count Our Hours
Lord, I’ m offering You a new day.
Already, You know,
‘this isn’t going to be pretty.’
I count on You to do what You have always done.
Take the morsels which Your hand has touched.
As for the rest,
with one mighty exhalation of Holy Breath
Spirit the chaff away.
At day’s end,
as with all my yesterdays,
I will lay my head upon Your Breast,
and sweetly count our hours.
By Joann Nelander
I Dream of Heaven
Night and day, I dream of heaven.
O, not the dream that slumber brings,
that mirage that is tortuous,
with struggles and comings and goings,
jumbles and journeys
taking me far, far from home.
No, I speak now of the dream of my heart.
I dream of heaven, the cry of my heart.
With longing and yearning and surety of soul,
I labor in love for a home that I know.
Through all life’s long journey,
my days are replete
with a pilgrim’s desire,
that sheds light ‘to my feet.
Though weary, and broken, I no longer doubt,
That all heaven is waiting to welcome with shout,
one miserable sinner, it can’t do without.
By Joann Nelander
On Dying Today
icon by the hand of Joann Nelander
A note from the Anchoress on retreat:
Just found this scrawled, uncharacteristically, in the back of a book –
When we meet God face-to-face, it is always a moment of grace,
but too it is a moment of judgment for us.
Judgment day, then, can be any day, any time, any particular
moment of an hour.
And so our death can happen many times,
a process of conversion, a process of turning to.
We die to ourselves, die to a particular sin or attachment,
and begin again, turning toward.
We no sooner die to one thing that we immediately
attach and live to another,
and judgment will come to that, too.
Sacrament of confession
hastens our dying and our rising,
the dying to the old self,
the rising to the new,
always, always, toward Christ.
Toward oneness, completion.
The Whole.
Life is a process of Incarnation.
Our reality, our wholeness, our completeness
in this world comes
through repeated offerings which we receive or refuse.
The Eucharistic Christ contributes to this formation, this process.
He enters us, we welcome Him.
One flesh.
Incarnation.
My whole woeful life just begun, again.
Be Holy! 