Silent Sentinelsdedicated to Christian belief and unflinching faith -- These Church towers, silhouetted against the Western skies, Invite the rural peoples to remember their past With its determined down-to-earth values that would live on for ages -- Live on in the soil, in the town and in the unbroken chains of life-in-death. The sentinels evoke memories of bygone days, When community, enlivened by its sense of togetherness, Brought all peoples as one to the rural Church and its congregation. Gathering outside, after Holy Mass, the folks planned afternoons, Families were invited for dinner and card playing, While the children shared fun in creative games of Cops and Robbers enjoyed in a sense of loving relationship. The table, heavy with farm food, offered its store of homemade, succulent wonders That blue-ribboned themselves on the pantry shelf. In the evening dusk, as families parted for hearth and home, The quiet, still Gothic towers, emphasizing the center of life and loving faith, could be seen As far as the naked eye could penetrate. There, against the darkened sky, the gaunt steeples mock the unseeing world. With their chide of a loss of faith and devoted, loving pride. The morning chimes ring out joyously to the world for another day--another hour of living faith, Renewed in the evolving mystical experience of Thoreau's "more day to dawn--the sun is but a morning star." |
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