Category: Levertov, Denise

God’s garments

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

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.

Jessica Powers

It’s Lent, but I feel incapable of praying

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

In her usual beautiful prose, Sarah Clarkson writes about her struggle, her incapacity to pray.

THE NIGHT BURNS BRIGHT and dark in my memory, a contrast of moods and scenes like a Caravaggio painting. The cathedral; bright, honeyed stone and gold instruments glinting on the altar. The kindness of my friend and his saving of an excellent seat for me as I skidded in, breathless, the sweet furor of bedtime rituals with my four children still an echo in my brain, a slight wildness in my eye. And the music, a many-layered brightness of harmony and word, hued like a crimson sunset to my synesthetic mind as a small choir sang a selection of ancient Orthodox chants and prayers.

I let myself breathe deeply as the music surged forward, let my eyes rove the warm, dappled space of the medieval church that summer night. But the longer I looked, the more darkness I saw. The shadows like dirty flocks of ravens in the high corners, the vivid stained glass windows I loved so well in the daytime obscured by night, the pain at the back of so many prayers I heard chanted, pleas for God to put an end to despair and death. And the darkness of my own weary heart when the concert had ended and I sat outdoors at a nearby pub and confessed to my long-time mentor and friend, a priest, that I found myself almost unable to pray.

You can read the rest here.