It’s still Eastertide. This poem by the lovely poet, Christina Rossetti, speaks of one suffering and longing for a resurrection of soul, pleading to Christ to rise in her. Even during Eastertide, we can easily feel the same as she, our hearts like stone, yet Christ is so, so drawn to those who, like her, long for him.
A Better Resurrection
I have no wit, no words, no tears; My heart within me like a stone Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears; Look right, look left, I dwell alone; I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk: Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring; O Jesus, rise in me.
My life is like a broken bowl, A broken bowl that cannot hold One drop of water for my soul Or cordial in the searching cold; Cast in the fire the perish’d thing; Melt and remould it, till it be A royal cup for Him, my King: O Jesus, drink of me.
“The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes, so that later, from this experience, we take the criteria for judgement and can correctly evaluate the arguments. For me an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death of Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said: “Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true”. The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer’s inspiration.”
The whole address is worth reading.
This Sunday’s poem by Anne Porter recounts her experience as a child of music wounding her heart, revealing to her that “we were made for Paradise.”
Music
When I was a child I once sat sobbing on the floor Beside my mother’s piano As she played and sang For there was in her singing A shy yet solemn glory My smallness could not hold
And when I was asked Why I was crying I had no words for it I only shook my head And went on crying
Why is it that music At its most beautiful Opens a wound in us An ache a desolation Deep as a homesickness For some far-off And half-forgotten country
I’ve never understood Why this is so
But there’s an ancient legend From the other side of the world That gives away the secret Of this mysterious sorrow
For centuries on centuries We have been wandering But we were made for Paradise As deer for the forest
And when music comes to us With its heavenly beauty It brings us desolation For when we hear it We half remember That lost native country
We dimly remember the fields Their fragrant windswept clover The birdsongs in the orchards The wild white violets in the moss By the transparent streams
And shining at the heart of it Is the longed-for beauty Of the One who waits for us Who will always wait for us In those radiant meadows
Yet also came to live with us And wanders where we wander.
A blessed Easter to all of you, my friends. An Easter Sunday poem by Hopkins. May you be prodigal in your rejoicing over these next 50 days!
Easter
Break the box and shed the nard; Stop not now to count the cost; Hither bring pearl, opal, sard; Reck not what the poor have lost; Upon Christ throw all away: Know ye, this is Easter Day.
Build His church and deck His shrine, Empty though it be on earth; Ye have kept your choicest wine— Let it flow for heavenly mirth; Pluck the harp and breathe the horn: Know ye not ‘tis Easter morn?
Gather gladness from the skies; Take a lesson from the ground; Flowers do ope their heavenward eyes And a Spring-time joy have found; Earth throws Winter’s robes away, Decks herself for Easter Day.
Beauty now for ashes wear, Perfumes for the garb of woe, Chaplets for dishevelled hair, Dances for sad footsteps slow; Open wide your hearts that they Let in joy this Easter Day.
Seek God’s house in happy throng; Crowded let His table be; Mingle praises, prayer, and song, Singing to the Trinity. Henceforth let your souls alway Make each morn an Easter Day.
“He who is more fair than all the sons of men offered his fair face to be spat upon by sinful men; he allowed those eyes that rule the universe to be blindfolded by wicked men; he bared his back to the scourges; he submitted that head which strikes terror in principalities and powers to the sharpness of the thorns; he gave himself up to be mocked and reviled, and at the end enduring the cross, the nails, the lance, the gall, the vinegar, remaining always gentle, meek, and full of peace.” (St. Aelred)
“What can we learn from Peter’s turning around? First, it was not Peter who turned. It was the Lord who turned and looked at Peter. When the cock crew, that might have kept Peter from falling further, but he was just in the very act of sin. And when a person is in the thick of his sin, his last thought is to throw down his arms and repent. So Peter never thought of turning, but the Lord turned. And when Peter would rather have looked anywhere else than at the Lord, the Lord looked at Peter. This scarce-noticed fact is the only sermon needed to anyone who sins—that the Lord turned first.” (Henry Drummond)
For a more extensive and most beautiful meditation on this, do read W. Tyler Allen’s take. Imagine in his look, Christ saying to Peter, “Let me see your face. Let me hear your voice.” The Bridegroom constantly loves and pursues.
The poem I selected for this Sunday is by Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl, a fascinating woman, a mystic, a missionary, a poet. Not surprising, she took inspiration from St. Charles de Foucauld. Her mysticism led her out to the “little people”.
“He’s with me among the people I encounter today. … All of them will be people he’s come looking for — those he’s come to save. … Through the brothers and sisters who are close to us, whom he will make us to serve, love, and save, waves of his love will go out to the end of the world and the end of time.”
I’ve always loved her writing, her down-to-earth, stab-you-through-the-heart writing. In this poem, she writes about the passion—a most apt topic for Lent—one that we can so easily think about in grandiose terms—how we’re going to lay down our lives for Christ. But Madeleine stabs-us-in-the-heart with what it really means for each of us and challenges us to embrace that reality with the same ardor that we embrace our own self-satisfying ideas of self-denial.
Pray for us, Madeleine.
The passion, our passion, sure we are waiting for it. We know it must come and of course we intend to live it with a certain grandeur. We are waiting for the bell to ring that will inform us that the time has come for us to sacrifice ourselves. Like a log in the fireplace, we know that we have to be consumed. Like a piece of wool cut with scissors, we have to be separated. Like young animals that are sent to slaughter, we have to be destroyed. We are waiting for our passion but it does not come. In its place there come small patiences. Patiences, those small pieces of the passion whose job it is to kill us gently for your glory, to kill us without our getting the glory.
From dawn they come to greet us: our nerves, either too much on edge or too numb…. It is our disgust with our daily ration of life and the neurotic desire for all that is not ours.
This is the way our patiences come, in serried ranks or in single file, and they always forget to remind us of the fact that they are the martyrdom for which we were preparing. And scornfully we let them pass by, as we wait for a cause that would be worth dying for. If every redemption is a martyrdom, not every martyrdom involves the spilling of blood. From the beginning of our lives to the very end, one by one, grapes may be picked from the bunch. This is the passion of patiences.
This—”As Kingfishers Catch Fire—is certainly one of my favorites with his famous line: “for Christ plays in ten thousand places,/Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
I am constantly intrigued by the unique and unrepeatable beauty of each person. I dwell upon that mystery constantly. Hopkins, in his own unrepeatable way, expresses this mystery the best I have found.
You can read the poem and the rest of my thoughts by clicking on the photo below.
Two poems this Sunday by two different poets who were both inspired by pondering God’s garments. And both stemming from a felt need to frantically reach out to grab them. We can all feel that way at times, especially during Lent. I’ll just leave them here with the encouragement to try to place yourselves in each poem.
God the Father, Cristoforo Roncalli (Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication)
Suspended
I had grasped God’s garments in the void but my hand slipped on the rich silk of it.
The ‘everlasting arms’ my sister loved to remember must have upheld my leaden weight from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel nothing, no embrace, I have not plummeted.
Denise Levertov
The Garments of God
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul. He is God alone, supreme in His majesty. I sit at His feet, a child in the dark beside Him; my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me. He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments– not velvet or silk and affable to the touch, but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch, and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will. Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal to the Divinity that I am but dust. Here is the loud profession of my trust. I need not go abroad to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still. I have this potent prayer through good or ill: here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.
Witnesses to Hope 