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                                     Continue

Continue to practice the remembrance of the good.

     

     So should we all.

     How like us to be discouraged by human

     Error, by slippage of the DNA.

     We are all alike 

     Scourged at the core, 

     There

     Where heart's affections,

     Grace and Election,

     Sinners' afflictions, Doubter's

     Redress and Pilgrim's progress 

     fail us as never before.

        Burned by the same rope,

     Cut by he same paper,

     Bitten by the same invisible fleas,

     We can easily lose heart and hope

Or continue to practice the remembrance of the good.

     Remember the gentle smile of the small nun:

     Her fealty a kind of purity,

     Her vows a consecration of purpose 

     To shrewd disguise and pragmatic bravery.

     Mother superior, courage like the flame

     She became, not to be consumed by hopelessness. 

     Saving the very God from evil.

     Rescuing from extinction a possible faith.

     

     Remember one who walked bemused, alert

     To nature's guidebook, who bending down  

     In the park to retrieve a single feather, found 

     Grace in the colors of a marvellous wing;

     One whose fealty knew the Act of Creation, who

     Espied God in nature's Architecture, 

     Care detecting

     In nature's Art. 

     If

     

     Purity of Heart 

     Is to Will One Thing

     There in the North where abstract terror 

     Gave birth to Century's nightmare.

     And in the East where the innocent lined up 

     By the shores of the Danube,

     There where the Christian world seemed

     Absolutely in Lucifer's grip,

     And the sway of Ahriman and the

     Devils of dissolution  

     Daunted many a weary mind,

     Redemption came through rescue

     Of the children who would be saved.

     Courage of simple farmers

     Who added a daughter or son;

     Courage of parents releasing children

     To protection of nuns.

Continue to practice remembrance of the good.

     So should we all.

     Praise to the rescuers

     Is due.

     

     But let us remember too

     The goodness of children

     Who had to learn and 

     Unlearn their catechism.

     Come early, come late

     They learned to be True.

     For them another sense to saving,

     To camouflage. To gratitude.

     Not to rescue Christendom,

     Nor wrest from death beatitudes,

     Not to salvage the doctrine of Election 

     Nor goad the faithful to Confession. 

     For them another lesson: 

     Elusive: for the few:

     What it meant, and means, to each and every one 

     To be a Jew.

 Continue to practice the remembrance of the good.

          So should we all.

     

 Not to be discouraged by human

     failings,

     Not to be 

     Scoured by evil, 

by treachery and war.

     Not to despise the frailty

     That haunts our human core.

     Of  these default positions

       We can easily lose heart and hope

Or continue to practice the remembrance of the good.