To wash sorrow into a deeper pool (Kathleen Dean Moore)

   Sorrow is part of the earth's great cycles, flowing into the night like cool air sinking down a river course. To feel sorrow is to flow on the pulse of the earth, the surge from living to dying, from coming into being to ceasing to exist. Maybe this is why the earth has the power over time to wash sorrow into a deeper pool, cold and shadowed. And maybe this is why, even though sorrow never disappears, it can make a deeper connection to the currents of life and so connect, somehow, to sources of wonder and solace. 

--Kathleen Dean Moore 

In November we remember All Souls… 

Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPtXfVt9sLw 

Quotation source: Francis Wells, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

Time being precious (Blessed Fulton J. Sheen)

   Every moment comes to you pregnant with a divine purpose; time being so precious that God deals it out only second by second. Once it leaves your hands and your power to do with it as you please, it plunges into eternity, to remain forever whatever you made it. 

--Blessed Fulton J. Sheen 

Image source: https://www.archilovers.com/stories/5232/the-8-most-extraordinary-spiral-staircases-found-around-the-world.html 

Quotation source

You must stand ready (Henri Nouwen)

   When Jesus speaks about the end of time, he speaks precisely about the importance of waiting. He says that nations will fight against nations and that there will be wars and earthquakes and misery. People will be in agony, and they will say, The Christ is there! No, he is here! Many will be confused and many will be deceived. But Jesus says, you must stand ready, stand awake, stay tuned to the word of God, so that you will survive all that is going to happen and be able to stand confidently (con-fide, with trust) in the presence of God together in community (see Matthew 24). That is the attitude of waiting that allows us to be people who can live in a very chaotic world and survive spiritually. 

--Henri Nouwen        

Image source: https://www.tbd.community/en/a/virtual-communities-underused-tool-could-save-world 

Quotation source

Hushed expectation (Brother David Steindl-Rast)

   May you grow still enough to hear the small noises earth makes in preparing for the long sleep of winter, so that you yourself may grow calm and grounded deep within. 

   May you grow still enough to hear the trickling of water seeping into the ground, so that your soul may be softened and healed, and guided in its flow. 

   May you grow still enough to hear the splintering of starlight in the winter sky and the roar at earth’s fiery core. 

   May you grow still enough to hear the stir of a single snowflake in the air, so that your inner silence may turn into hushed expectation. 

--Brother David Steindl-Rast 

Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6zr2eLpduI 

Prayer source

How do I want to live now so as to be ready? (Fr. Ron Rolheiser OMI)

   What’s still unfinished in your life? Most of us don’t complete our lives, we just run out of time. So, consciously or unconsciously, we make a bucket list of things we still want to see, do, and finish before we die. In fantasizing about what’s unfinished in our lives, there’s the danger of missing out on the richness of what’s actually going on in our lives. The better question is: How do I want to live now so as to be ready to die when it’s my time? 

 --Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Facebook, October 5 ,2022 

Image source: https://www.justhourglasses.com/products/solid-chechen-wood-hourglass-with-smooth-spindles?variant=22334476483

How to create a bucket list

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 27, 2022: You do not now on which day your Lord will come...

You do not know on which day your Lord will come…

Are you preparing now for perfect union with God? 

    Speaking to a community threatened on all sides with exile, the prophet Isaiah offers his countrymen the promise of something to come: he speaks of what Jerusalem will one day be, not physically, but in spiritual terms. No longer will there be armed conflict, for they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; peace will be the order of the day. Nations will be drawn to Jerusalem not for its power but because it will be a city where all will walk in the light of the Lord; indeed, God’s justice and divine presence will cause all nations to stream to Jerusalem. Psalm 122 likewise reminds us that Jerusalem was built as a city with compact unity; there, all will go rejoicing to the house of the Lord. For a people living in a dangerously precarious political situation, Isaiah’s prophecy speaks of a radical shift in how they live and how they understand themselves. For all that danger threatens, Isaiah knows the future will one day be bright again. 

    In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus similarly calls his disciples to a radical shift in how they live and how they understand themselves. They must be prepared, Jesus tells them, for they do not know on which day the Lord will come. It is no longer appropriate to carry on as usual, as if nothing has happened, and Jesus’ death and resurrection will cause them to enter into a new age, with new hopes and new expectations. Paul likewise reminds the Romans that it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep, for Jesus’ death and resurrection have brought clarity, and they now see clearly what they are to hope for, namely, perfect union with Christ in heaven. 

    God has shown us, too, the path we are to walk, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. Now that God has sent his Son, we can no longer dwell in the darkness of the past, but must put on the armor of light that is the Lord Jesus Christ. This light reveals who we are, the choices we have made, and the promise in which we live. The new age of which Paul speaks invites us to enter into relationship more fully than ever before, in expectation of the coming of the Son of Man. We are waiting for that second coming, the fulfillment of all the Incarnation has meant to us; we need to be living for it now, ready to embrace the radical shift it entails, so that we can one day also embrace that perfect union that God promises to all people of faith. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Gratefulness (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

    What do we really need from life? Enough light to see a divine sense in this world; enough faith to follow that light; and enough love to make the darkness tolerable. Happiness is not what makes us grateful, but gratefulness is what makes us happy. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, 

Facebook, May 11, 2020 

Image source: Photo taken by Fr. Patrick Michaels during a power outage at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, October 2019, https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2654012181326854&type=3

Our lives must be acts of gratitude (Bishop Robert Barron)

   Friends, today we celebrate the national feast of Thanksgiving. Biblical Christianity insists that our lives must be acts of praise and gratitude to the Creator. 

   Such obligations would indeed be burdensome and dehumanizing if they proceeded from a competitive and needy supreme being, but since they come from the one who cannot compete with us and who stands in need of nothing, they are in fact liberating. The gratitude that we offer to the true God is not absorbed by God, but rather breaks against the rock of the divine self-sufficiency, redounding to our benefit. 

   In one of the prefaces to the Eucharistic Prayer in the Roman rite of the Mass, we find this remarkable observation directed toward God: You have no need of our praise, yet our thanksgiving is itself your gift, since our praises add nothing to your greatness but profit us for salvation. 

   It is precisely because God has no need of our praise that our act of gratitude is a gift; it is precisely because God’s plenitude cannot be increased that our prayer intensifies rather than compromises our participation in the loop of grace. 

 --Bishop Robert Barron
Gospel Reflection
November 26, 2020

Happy Thanksgiving from
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley!

Image source 1: https://www.alsipnursery.com/4-gourd-geous-fall-displays-youll-love-this-season/
Image source 2: Wilhelm Hensel, Miriam’s Song of Praise (1836), https://www.rct.uk/collection/408985/miriams-song-of-praise

Acknowledging the good (Eckhart Tolle)

   Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance. 

--Eckhart Tolle 

Join us for Thanksgiving Mass 

tomorrow morning at 9:30! 

Image source: In Mexico, ex-votos are an expression of gratitude, to God or to a saint. You will find this one and others like it here: https://myquest.blog/2020/12/27/ex-votos-art-as-gratitude-and-healing/ The text on this ex-voto above reads, “Señora Carmen Elena commended her son to San Antonio de Padua de la Sauceda, when having fallen into a well, He delivered him from danger, and as an expression of gratitude, she dedicates the present retablo [altar].” 

Quotation source

Experience leaves deep traces (John O'Donohue)

   As we journey onwards in life, more and more spaces within us fill with absence. We begin to have more and more friends among the dead. Every person suffers the absence of their past. It is utterly astonishing how the force and fiber of each day unravel into the vacant air of yesterday. You look behind you and you see nothing of your days here. Our vanished days increase our experience of absence. Yet our past does not deconstruct as if it never was. Memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather. Memory rescues experience from total disappearance. The kingdom of memory is full of the ruins of presence. It is astonishing how faithful experience actually is; how it never vanishes completely. Experience leaves deep traces in us. It is surprising that years after something has happened to you the needle of thought can hit some groove in the mind and the music of a long-vanished event can rise in your soul as fresh and vital as the evening it happened. 

--John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

In November we remember All Souls... 

Image source: https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/how-to-use-a-record-player-turntable/ 
To purchase this book: https://johnodonohue.com/store

The unworldly poet King (Caryll Houselander)

   The Child Christ lives on from generation to generation in the poets, very often the frailest of men but men whose frailty is redeemed by a child's unworldliness, by a child's delight in loveliness, by the spirit of wonder. 

   Christ was a poet, and all through His life the Child remains perfect in Him. It was the poet, the unworldly poet, who was King of the invisible kingdom; the priests and rulers could not understand that. The poets understand it, and they, too, are kings of the invisible kingdom, vassal kings of the Lord of Love, and their crowns are crowns of thorns indeed. 

―Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God 

Image source: Christ in Majesty, mosaic, The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, https://www.nationalshrine.org/blog/why-we-celebrate-the-solemnity-of-our-lord-jesus-christ-king-of-the-universe/

Christ Our King (Village Lights)

We are the heartbeat, You are the love
We are the fallen, You raise us up
We are the voices, You are the song we sing
We are the thirsty, You are the well
We are the hungry, You are the bread
We are Your children, You know our every need

You are our King 

Christ Redeemer

The Center of everything
Christ, Our Healer
Giver of hope and peace
The Only One who ever could set us free
Christ our King,
Christ our King

We are the longing, awaiting the dawn
You are the Shepherd, leading us on
Blessed Messiah, Home for the wandering

Refrain

We are the body, the work of Your hands
Living reminders of Your love for man
So, help us to live out that love so others might see
You are our King

Refrain

To hear Christ Our King performed by Village Lights, click on the video below: 

Image source: https://newsletter.sistersofcarmel.com/2020/11/11/prince-of-peace/ 

Video source

How the reign of God can be known (Julia Walsh)

   The criminal who gets to join Jesus in paradise models this for us all. 

   Unique to Luke’s Gospel, in this criminal we meet a man who is unexpectedly humble and names the truth. He understands that he’s united with Jesus, subject to the same condemnation. He knows he is powerless but Christ is at his side. He encourages another to fear God, to have awe and respect. He understands the limits of his humanity. 

    The criminal next to Christ shows us how the reign of God can be known and experienced if our gaze is totally on Christ, on the power of God--and not on one’s self. 

   From a cross, the criminal gained a new perspective and was able to see the truth. He was free to be authentic, to see the big picture, to know the love of God. 

   Following the criminal’s example, let us also see the kingdom of God around us and live like the saints we were made to be! 

--Julia Walsh, FSPA 

Image source: Titian, Christ and the Good Thief (c.1566), https://www.wikiart.org/en/titian/christ-and-the-good-thief 
Quotation source

Great power (William Booth)

     The greatness of man’s power is the measure of his surrender. 

--William Booth     

Image source: Simon falls at the feet of Jesus, The Chosen, Season 1, Episode 4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRBv1r5JJ0s

The Kingdom of God is at hand (Bishop Robert Barron)

   [One] great task of the Church is to proclaim, The kingdom of God is at hand. The Church is an announcing, proclaiming, evangelizing organism. What we proclaim is that, in Jesus Christ, a whole new way of ordering things has appeared, that God, in Christ, is drawing all things to himself. The great ordering principles of the world—money, fame, power, sex, pleasure—are overthrown. A new King has come, a new way of organizing life. Love, inclusion, compassion, nonviolence, forgiveness, especially of enemies—this is now the way sanctioned by God. 

--Bishop Robert Barron,

Gospel Reflection,

September 30, 2022 

Image source: C. B. Chambers, Christ the King, restored, https://www.catholictothemax.com/catholic-art/christ-the-king-by-chambers-restored-gold-framed-art/

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 20, 2022: If you are King of the Jews...

If you are King of the Jews…

What does it mean to be king? 

    In the Second Book of Samuel, David is made king of Israel when the elders of Israel come to him with the request that he unite the people once again. David is one they recognize as having led them into battle; they recognize in him the qualities necessary to a successful king. They are his bone and his flesh, his strength and his vulnerability. It is thanks to David’s conquest of the Jebusites that, in Psalm 122, the people can go rejoicing to the house of the Lord. Jerusalem thus becomes his city and represents the united people of Israel; the temple there is their spiritual heart. David is a temporal king of a specific geographical region; his house will give rise to the King of all Kings, Jesus Christ. '

    And yet… when Jesus is on the cross, the soldiers jeer at him, calling out, If you are King of the Jews, save yourself. In Luke’s Gospel, the cross is Jesus’ moment of coronation, not because he is crowned with a crown of thorns, but by his death and resurrection. The kingdom is present wherever Christ rules, even in our world, but the kingdom in its fullness is beyond this world. The jeering that surrounds Jesus is part of the earthly kingdom, where the human desire is to control, to dominate. But the kingdom of God is not about military power but about loving humility; Jesus is crowned King because of the power of his love, and that kingdom is revealed every time we open our hearts in love to another person. Thanks to Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul tells the Colossians, we are delivered from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. Our focal point should be Christ, who delivers us from darkness into a kingdom of light. Jesus, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, is and must be the King that rules our hearts, that we might join him in death; he is our hope. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class. 

Image source: www.wordclouds.com

When you meet someone in deep grief (Patricia McKernon Runkle)

When you meet someone deep in grief  

 

Slip off your needs 

and set them by the door. 

 

Enter barefoot 

this darkened chapel 

 

hollowed by loss 

hallowed by sorrow 

 

its gray stone walls 

and floor. 

 

You, congregation 

of one 

 

are here to listen 

not to sing. 

 

Kneel in the back pew. 

Make no sound, 

 

let the candles speak. 

--Patricia McKernon Runkle          

           

In November we remember All Souls...     

Image source: https://www.corew.org/news/2020/3/27/prayers-during-troubled-times 

Poem source

Love is a red thread that pulls us through (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)

When my teacher told me 

Everything we love can 

and will be taken from us, 

I did not know how she 

was preparing in me 

a synaptic path. 

I understood her words 

in the way one understands a journey 

by reading a map. 

Now, ten years later, with every breath 

I travel this path of loss 

as so many others have before me, 

and yet there is no trail, no signposts, 

no destination, and the path changes direction 

from moment to moment. 

But the path does not feel foreign. 

Every turn of it is paved with truth— 

Everything we love can and will be taken from us. 

Those words now offer 

the strange comfort of prophecy 

as I wander these trails of impermanence, 

stunned with gratitude even as I weep, 

alive with loving what doesn’t last, 

astonished by the enormity of love— 

how love is the red thread that pulls us through, 

not a thread to follow, 

but a guide that never, ever leaves the path. 

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer,     

The Journey of Love       

Image source: https://biljanaognenova.com/2017/08/13/red-thread-the-invisible-string-interconnecting-all-women/

Death brings us all up short (Anne Lamott)

   Death brings us all up short. Deterioration is not ideal—how can this person not walk anymore, or remember me?—but death is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Float, looming over us like Snidely Whiplash. Because so many of my people have died, I have written often about death, insistent that it is not our enemy—snakes are. Also, cheese, which can be so hard to stop eating once you start. But it is not our enemy, a dubious friend, a friend you’d love not to hear from. 

   The problem is that you can’t have a juicy, expansive life without inviting her to the table. You can’t have joy without death. And the more you look death in the eyes, the less barbed its sting. 

   Here’s my plan: we take care of each other, especially the poor and scared, and even the annoying. We look up to the sky as often as we can remember to. Yes, we’ll see Snidely Whiplash but also pelicans and stars. We’ll hear notes of Judy Collins songs and wild geese. We’ll smell autumn afoot in the smoke, in dying leaves, in persimmons ripening overhead like tiny Japanese lanterns, giving off a little light, and which will taste so delicious, so soon.

--Anne Lamott 

Facebook, 9-30-22

 

Image source1 : https://www.americanoceans.org/facts/brown-pelican-migration-patterns/

Image source 2:  https://www.gardenia.net/plant/diospyros-kaki

Rooted in love (Henri Nouwen)

    Once we have come to the deep inner knowledge—a knowledge more of the heart than of the mind—that we are born out of love and will die into love, that every part of our being is deeply rooted in love, and that this love is our true Father and Mother, then all forms of evil, illness, and death lose their final power over us and become painful but hopeful reminders of our true divine childhood. 

    The apostle Paul expressed this experience of the complete freedom of the children of God when he wrote, I am certain of this: neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nothing already in existence and nothing still to come, nor any power, nor the heights nor the depths, nor any created thing whatever, will be able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38–39). 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Catherine Murphy, Rooted in Love, available for purchase at: https://www.uncommongoods.com/product/rooted-in-love-swing-sculpture 

Quotation source

Salvation (Paul Celan)

Once, 

I heard him, 

he was washing the world, 

unseen, nightlong, 

real. 

 

One and infinite, 

annihilated, 

they I’ed. 

 

Light was. 

Salvation. 

--Paul Celan, Once                          

Note: Paul Celan was the son of Jewish parents, both of whom died in the concentration camps. This was a defining experience of his poetry. 

Image source: Doris Zinkeisen, Human Laundry, Belsen, 1945, as part of a website devoted to Artists Responses to the Holocaust, https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/artists-responses-to-the-holocaust 

Poem source & analysis

Today we honor our veterans (A Prayer)

Dear Lord, 

    Today we honor our veterans, worthy men and women who gave their best when they were called upon to serve and protect their country. We pray that you will bless them for their unselfish service in the continual struggle to preserve our freedoms, our safety, and our country’s heritage, for all of us. 

Amen.      

Image source: https://oslc-warrenton.org/sermons/the-eleventh-hour-a-sermon-for-veterans-day/ 

Prayer source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 13, 2022: Lo, the day is coming...

Lo, the day is coming… 

Do you think much about the Second Coming? 

    The people of Israel struggled with the idea of being faithful to covenant. The author of the Book of Malachi, God’s messenger, writes to remind people that evildoers, those who rely upon themselves and have no need of God, will be lost to the conflagration when the end comes: all the proud and all the evildoers will be like stubble, and the day is coming that will set them on fire. The proud have no substance; they have abandoned the substance God has made and will disappear into the air. But for you who fear my name, the Lord says, there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays. In the dark vision of Malachi, there is hope for those who are good. Paul must likewise reassure the Thessalonians, who believe that, since the Second Coming is imminent, they have no need to work: if anyone is unwilling to work, neither shall that one eat, Paul says. The Second Coming will occur, but the Thessalonians are to live actively in the present, supporting their community and continuing to be a witness to God’s love. 

    Jesus similarly warns of the difficulties of the end times, in Luke’s Gospel: nation will rise against nation, and his disciples will be hated by all because of Jesus’ name. Yet all this is nothing in light of the lives they will secure if they are faithful, eternal lives lived in Christ. Don’t worry about the end times, Jesus says, worry about staying true to God. Be prepared, but know that the Lord will provide all you need: I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist. Participate in salvation by doing the work of Christ now, today, by living the Gospel, even if imperfectly. Be a witness to God’s love and fear not the physical death that is to come, for if you allow Christ to live in you and if you live in him, then you will know salvation and will be reborn eternally in Christ. By your perseverance you will secure your lives, Jesus says. After all, Psalm 98 reminds us, The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice… but in his own time. That promise of justice offers us hope for eternal life. For the moment, though, we don’t need to focus on the timing: just be ready, and remain faithful. The moment the Lord comes to rule our lives is moment we will no longer fear death because we accept his rule, his justice, his embrace. Then and only then will we live entirely in him and he in us, for all eternity. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class. 

Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Blessed are those who mourn (Henri Nouwen)

   What to do with our losses?... We must mourn our losses. We cannot talk or act them away, but we can shed tears over them and allow ourselves to grieve deeply. To grieve is to allow our losses to tear apart feelings of security and safety and lead us to the painful truth of our brokenness. Our grief makes us experience the abyss of our own life in which nothing is settled, clear, or obvious, but everything is constantly shifting and changing… 

    But in the midst of all this pain, there is a strange, shocking, yet very surprising voice. It is the voice of the One who says: Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted. That’s the unexpected news: there is a blessing hidden in our grief. Not those who comfort are blessed, but those who mourn! Somehow, in the midst of our tears, a gift is hidden. Somehow, in the midst of our mourning, the first steps of the dance take place. Somehow, the cries that well up from our losses belong to our songs of gratitude. 

--Henri Nouwen 

In November we remember All Souls… 

Image source: https://conversationsonthefringe.com/2018/04/23/myths-about-grief/

Quotation source

The end of the spiritual life (St. Thomas Aquinas / St. Teresa of Jesus)

The end of the spiritual life is that 

man unite himself to God by love.

 

--St. Thomas Aquinas, 

Summa Theologica 

   O Lord, who could describe how great a gain it is to cast ourselves into Yours arms and make an agreement with You: You will take care of my affairs and I of Yours. 

   For what am I, Lord, without You? What am I worth if I am not near You? If once I stray from Your Majesty, be it ever so little, where shall I find myself? 

   O my Lord, my Mercy and my Good! What more do I want in this life than to be so near You that there is no division between You and me? 

   O Lord of my life, draw me to Yourself, but do it in such a way that my will may ever remain so united to You that it shall be unable to leave You. 

--St. Teresa of Jesus, 

Conceptions of the Love of God

Image source: https://www.drawforgod.com/how-to-draw-close-to-god/ 

Quotation source

Death does not have the final word (Bishop Robert Barron)

    In light of the Resurrection, we know that God’s deepest intention for us is life, and life to the full. He wants death not to have the final word; he wants a renewal of the heavens and the earth. 

     Therefore, we have to stop living in the intellectual and spiritual space of death. We have to stop living intellectually in a world dominated by death and the fear of death. We have to adjust our attitudes in order to respond properly to what God really intends for us and the world. 

    Though we rarely admit it, we live in a death-haunted space. The fear of death broods over us like a cloud and conditions all of our thoughts and actions. What if we really believed, deep down, that death did not have the final word? Would we live in such fear, in such a cramped spiritual space? Or would we see that the protection of our egos is not the number one concern of our existence? 

--Bishop Robert Barron,

April 16, 2022

Image source: Attavante degli Attavanti, Martyrdom of the Seven Hebrew Brothers (c. 1450), https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/if-the-mother-of-the-maccabees-knew-of-atoms/
Quotation source

We shall rise with them! (Rory Cooney)

Up from the earth, and surging like a wave…
Rise up, O Christ! Your God defies the grave!
Up from the earth push blade and leaf and stem
They rise for Christ and we shall rise with them!

Up from the cross, a billion voices strain
Cry for a hand to lift them from their pain
Up from the cross, but scarred in limbs and side,
A wounded Church brings healing far and wide.

Up from the night, Christ Morning Star awakes,
Oh what a light upon earth’s darkness breaks!
Up from the night, Christ sows his life like wheat
And death itself lies fallow at his feet! 

Up from the tomb of all the past conceals!
See how our God a brighter day reveals.
Up from the tomb! Though death had bound us tight,
Like Lazarus we stumble into light! 

Cry to the cross, where tyrants work their dread!
Shout to the tombs where parents mourn their dead!
Sing to the earth, for God all newness gives!
Alleluia! Christ Liberator lives!
Alleluia! Christ Liberator lives! 

To hear Up from the Earth from Rory Cooney’s Change Our Hearts collection, click on the video below: 

Image source: Tintoretto, Paradise (1588), http://art-now-and-then.blogspot.com/2014/06/art-and-jesus-second-coming.html  

Video source

My God shall raise me (Sir Walter Raleigh)

But from this earth, 

this grace, this dust, 

My God shall raise me, 

I trust. 

--Sir Walter Raleigh,

Ever Such Is Time 

Image source: The Harrowing of Hell, panel (15th c.), artist unknown, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O71087/the-harrowing-of-hell-panel-unknown/ 

Quotation source