Witnesses to Hope

Come, perpetual joy.
Come, unwitherable wreath.
Come, O purple raiment of our Lord and God.
Come, girdle, clear as crystal and many-coloured with precious gems.
Come, inaccessible refuge.
Come, Thou whom my poor soul desireth and hath desired.
Come, lonely One, to the lonely one–for lonely I am, as Thou canst see.
Come, Thou who hast become my longing, for that Thou hast ordained,
that I must needs long for Thee whom no human breath has ever reached.
Come, my breath and my life.
Come, joy, glory, and my incessant delight.

~Symeon the New Theologian

Come, true light,
Come, eternal life,
Come, secret of hiddenness.
Come, delight that has no name.
Come, unutterableness.
Come, O presence, forever fleeing from human nature.
Come, everlasting jubilee.
Come, light without end.
Come, awaited by all who are in want.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, mighty one, forever creating, recreating, and renewing with a mere wave of Thy hand.
Come, Thou who remainest wholly invisible, for none ever to grasp or to caress.
Come, Thou who flowest in the river of hours,
yet immovably stayest above it,
who dwellest above all heavens,
yet bendest to us who are bowed down.

~Symeon the New Theologian

to be continued . . .

It’s Sunday and time for me to share a poem.  I love this poem by Luci Shaw.  I think it’s one of the first I ever read of hers and always comes back to mind this time of year.   I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  I think it’s one that benefits greatly from being read aloud.  (There are shades of Hopkins in this poem.)

May 20: Very Early Morning

All the field praises him/all
dandelions are his glory/gold
and silver all trilliums unfold
white flames above their trinities
of leaves all wild strawberries
and massed wood violets   reflect his skies–
clean blue and white
all brambles/all oxeyes
all stalks and stems lift to this light
all young windflower bells
tremble on hair
springs for his air’s
carillon touch/last year’s yarrow (raising
brittle star skeletons) tells
age is not past praising
all small low unknown
unnamed weeds…

I’ve been thinking about how I would answer my own query at the end of yesterday’s post, and one thing that immediately came to mind that brings beauty into my own life is a little photo album of art prints and such that I have collected.  For many of them I have an accompanying quote on the facing page.  Often I use it as an accompaniment in prayer, a source of meditation.  One example of this can be found here.  And here is another example:

I find this image of Mary quite beautiful.  Its title is Mary, the Mother and Consolation of the Grieving.   The following is the poem I have placed opposite it:

THE POOL OF GOD

There was nothing in the Virgin’s soul
that belonged to the Virgin–
no word, no thought, no image, no intent.
She was a pure, transparent pool reflecting
God, only God.
She…

A poem from Luci Shaw:

God Speaks in Blue

My friend hands me a gift
from overseas.  “Here,” she says.
“For you.”  The small packet rustles
with dry particles.  Through thin paper
my fingers feel the nubs.  I thank her,

 turning over the plain brown envelope.
There from the other side a photo–
the vivid, blunt cross of Mecanopsis Betonicifolia,
a Himalayan Blue Poppy–looks at me with
its gold eye, four azure petals blazing.

A blue to color a dream.  The blue
of Mary’s mantle according to Raphael.
The blue at the heart of a gas flame, within
an ice cave, one a cerulean door in a white wall
on Santorini, a kind of blue that

catches my heart ajar and blows it wide open.
Dry seeds and a picture, until next spring.
But, oh, if only I could be alive enough
to burn like this flower.  If only
I could bloom…

Yesterday I was talking a walk around Gallup Park along the Huron River.  When I turned one corner, I was struck by the brightness of the sun being reflected off a portion of the river.  I started thinking about how that brightness was the result of the sun being reflected of many individual drops of water.  We are like those drops of water.  Many days we can wonder whether our life counts for anything.  We’re just living our ordinary daily lives, trying to love God and love His people.  Who even knows about us?  Yet, we are part of a people, the people of God. And when His light shines on us, we do reflect it.

In order for light to reflect off of something, the object must be pure, and that requires purification –the purification that happens right there in the ordinariness of our lives. This reminds me of…