Poems for prayer at Candlemas and a new blog by Karolina Stolarska

Every day of the BardFest 1st to 14th Feb, we are taking steps forward in new artistic ventures, seeking out good collaborations and creating a space and a platform for each other’s work.

Today I’d like to feature Karolina’s new blog Beautiful Truth. She has been regularly creating a new poem each month, springing from her meditation on the readings for the day for the Jesus Christ Fullness of Life prayer group. This poem opens the time of prayer and helps people to encounter the Word by awakening their imaginations; personal experience opens the heart.

I particularly liked this one from December;

The Lord is the Rock

Drive steel deep to

Where there is truth

Pour Your light like liquid gold
Into all the recesses
Let the soul stand like a flame
Give it gravity

The Lord, the Lord is the Rock

Storms outside and
Storms behind the eyes
Sky-scraping roars
Crashing palaces in a paper game
And in the bay the sparkling
Ships may end up crypts
The world’s breath heaves
Dislodging inner stagnant floods
Hang like a barnacle

The Lord, the Lord is the Rock

Inside my Father’s house
I lay my head so still
My heart’s not among the debris
Peace perceives :

The Lord, the Lord is the Rock

………………………….

If you can be at the Candlemas JCFL prayer group on Thursday 3rd Feb, then you’ll hear her poem for Candlemas too. Or you can read it on the blog. If you’d like to come and pray in an atmosphere in which beauty and fellowship, silence, chant, Gaelic, Hebrew, Scripture and reflection are regularly combined to powerful effect, prepared very lovingly by Peter Kingsley then do come along at 7.30pm to Farm Street.

All the details and directions are here.

This day is especially dear to the Bards because we present our artstic work in a special way to the Lord to be blessed. For He comes to be purified and prophesied over. He comes as a sign of contradiction, humbly, carried by Mary and Joseph – a small beginning, destined to rock the world.

It is also the day on which Religious enter the noviciate and remember their vocational dedication. How appropriate that as artists dedicated to holiness in this world, we should be re-dedicated and re-orientated on this day too.
Hope to see you there!