Month: February 2024

God’s Righteous Frown: With Steady Gaze

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Directly in front of me
he is here,
him on this quiet morning
in a room of the Byzantine Museum, Athens,
in the hundred-degree heat and dust
of a city not yet fully awake.
Here, and I am suddenly confronted—
the oldest icon in existence—with
his image.

The rest of the room evaporates,
and all I see is him:
Pure mystery, great and wondrous,
dizzying and terrible.

How can wood and pigment
egg yolk and animal skin convey
such ethereal truth,
intensify the power,
captivate Christian eye and heart?

Christ of Sinai looks at me
with steady gaze.
His eyes—the famed twins
Justice and Mercy—
see straight through me
piercing the whitewashed tomb
of my exterior till it hurts.
One eye is dark, foreboding
shadows between the brow and lid
deepening and on the verge of righteous anger—
the other eye embraces all
even my unworthy soul.
I stand and cannot pray. My eyes swell with tears.
I cannot look anymore.
~Ed Higgins from “Icon: Christ of Sinai” from Near Truth Only 

Icon of Christ Pantocrator

I was not raised with religious icons. I have little understanding about how they may comfort and encourage those who value and even worship them. Yet I do understand inspiring art and words may deepen our faith in God. This has been true for millennia.

This particular Byzantine icon, the oldest known of Christ, is preserved from the 6th century, an early representation with an intense gaze from eyes that are both from man and God.

I look for tears in those eyes. My own fill up knowing Christ is able to see the depths beyond my white-washed exterior.

I look away, ashamed.

Because He sees what we try to keep from Him, Jesus weeps,
knowing the truth about us, yet loving us anyway.

the right and left sides of the icon shown in mirror image, illustrating the dual nature of divine and human

You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.
Matthew 23:27

Detail from “Descent from the Cross” by Rogier van der Weyden

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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When I Was Sinking Down: Every Falling Thing

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Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.
~Li-Young Lee “One Heart” from Book of My Nights

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Autumn” translated by Robert Bly

Sometimes I wake from my sleep
with a palpitating start:
dreaming of falling,
an intense sinking down,
my body pitching and tumbling
yet somehow I land,
~oh so softly~
in my bed,
my fear quashed and cushioned by
wakening safe.

I feel caught up,
and held tightly,
rescued amid the fall.
Like leaves drifting down
from heaven’s orchard,
like wings that lift me to freedom,
the bed of earth rises to greet me
and Someone is waiting to cradle me there.

Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
Psalm 90:10

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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Laid Aside His Crown: The Quiet Mystery

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Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention…
            And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed one, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
~Denise Levertov from “Primary Wonder” from Sands of the Well

Here is the mystery, the secret,
one might almost say the cunning,
of the deep love of God:
that it is bound to draw upon itself
the hatred and pain and shame
and anger and bitterness and rejection of the world,
but to draw all those things on to itself
is precisely the means chosen from all eternity
by the generous, loving God,
by which to rid his world of the evils
which have resulted from
human abuse of God-given freedom.
~N.T. Wright from The Crown and The Fire

Inundated by constant bad news of the world,
I must cling to the mystery of His magnetism
for my own weaknesses, flaws and bitterness.
He willingly pulls evil onto Himself, out of us.
Hatred and pain and shame and anger disappear
into the vortex of His love and beauty,
the mucky corners of my heart vacuumed spotless.

We are let in on a secret:
He is not sullied by absorbing the dirty messes of our lives.

Created in His image, sustained and loved,
thus reflecting Him,
it is no mystery
we are washed forever clean.

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
Ephesians 3:9

This Lenten season reflects on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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I Will Sing: Wakeful and Whispering

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This is the season:
Cradle of quiet,
Trees, waiting,
Naked on the hill,
Branches entwined
Like lovers holding
Hands.

Nothing is hidden.
A lone leaf quivers
On the apple tree.
Snow has yet to fall.
Waiting, the grass
Lies mute.

It could be death but
Isn’t. Yet. Wings
Quicken serrated air
As nuthatch, junco,
Chickadee flit from
Tree to tree, oblivious
To the hawk circling
Overhead, waiting,
Like the grass, for what
Comes next.

And it will come,
To all of us—there’s
No exception—
But if that frightens
You, hold it like
A stone beneath
The tongue until
Fear softens, and
You realize that
Nothing is ever lost
But is, instead,
Transformed as one
Door opens to another,
As even now light
Lifts the shadows,
And, out of sight,
Sap, wakeful, whispers
In the apple tree.
~Sarah Rossiter “Winter”

The soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. 

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well…
~T.S. Eliot – lines from “Little Gidding” in the Four Quartets

In the eternal “already, but not yet”
my wintry soul struggles to find its footing.
I can feel stuck in ice,
immobile and numb.
I wait impatiently
for a wakening thaw,
a whisper of the internal movement
caught between frozen and melting.
My soul’s sap smells the coming spring.
I tremble, anticipating a bloom that will not fade.
It may not happen quite yet,
but I know it is coming.

This Lenten season will reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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When I Was Sinking Down: Held Fast

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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 “Suspended” from Evening Train

Reaching out in hopeless grasp to save myself,
sinking down, prepared to fall,
yet twisting and turning in a chill wind,
in helpless wait for what is to come.

Now I dangle suspended
rather than plummet,
held fast through sheer grace
by a slender thread of faith.

This is my Rescuer revealed,
here is my Salvation
holding me fast from above
when I was sure I was lost forever.

Rescue me from the mire,
    do not let me sink
Psalm 69:14


…even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
Psalm 139:10

This Lenten season will reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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What Wondrous Love: A Handful of Dust

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I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
~T.S. Eliot in “Burial of the Dead” from “The Wasteland”

On this Valentine’s and Ash Wednesday,
I begin the dusty journey
into the ash heap
of my soul, confronting
my limitations,
my temptations,
my inability to think of myself second,
my acknowledgement that salvation
comes from no effort of my own.

This shadowland I live in is not all there is nor will ever be.

I am so tangible — dust arising and settling back when the soil reclaims me. I do not want to think of myself as a mere handful of dust. I feel alive and solid, casting a shadow before or behind me, depending on the time of day and time of life. Although today I have substance, my shadow remains an ephemeral reflection of who I am.

The dust I am is a humbling, fearful thing – until God lifted me up in the palm of His hand and blew life into me.

I am His; a reflection of Him.
I breathe and pulse and weep and bleed.

This is His wondrous love on this Valentine’s Day and every day: we each are more than a handful of dust or an incorporeal shadow.

So much more.

By the sweat of your face You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.
Genesis 3:19

This Lenten season will reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7bQl3IubU0
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Breathing Through the Knothole

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Her elbow rested here
a century ago.
This is the field

she looked upon,
a mad rush of wheat
anchored to the barn.

What her thoughts were,
the words she penned
are driven into the grain,

its deep tide crossing
under my hand. She breathes
through the knothole.

Outside, the wind
pushes the farm
down an ally of stars.
~Wyatt Townley, “The Oak Desk” from The Afterlives of Trees

J.R.Tolkien’s writing desk at the Wade Center at Wheaton College
Ears of Wheat – Van Gogh museum

A writing desk is simply a repurposed tree; the smoothly sanded surface of swirling grain and knotholes nourish and produce words and stories rather than leaves and fruit.

I can easily lose myself in the wood and wondering about its origins, whether it is as I sit at a window composing, or whether I’m outside walking among the trees which are merely potential writing desks in the raw.

Museums often feature the writing desks of the famous and I’ve seen a few over the years – it is thrilling to be able touch the wood they touched as they wrote – to gaze at the same grain patterns and knotholes they saw as the words gelled, and feel the worn spots where their elbows rested.

Though my little desk won’t ever become a museum piece, nor will my words be long-remembered, I am grateful for the tree that gave me this place to sit each morning, breathing deeply, praying that when I sit here, I might bear and share worthy fruit.

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I Must Go In…

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I must go in; the fog is rising…
~Emily Dickinson, her last words

photo by Nate Gibson

I have watched the dying
in their last hours:
often they see what I cannot,
listen to what is beyond my hearing,
stretch their arms overhead
as fingers touch what is beyond my reach.

I watch and wonder what it will be like
to reverse the steps that brought me here
from the fog of amnion.

The mist of living lifts
as we enter a place
unsurpassed in brilliance and clarity;
the mystery of what lies beyond solved
only by going in to it,
welcomed back to that unapproachable Light,
where we started.

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Choosing Joy

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Even a wounded world is feeding us.
Even a wounded world holds us,
giving us moments of wonder and joy.
I choose joy over despair. Not because
I have my head in the sand, but because
joy is what the earth gives me daily
and I must return the gift.
~Robin Wall Kimmerer from Braiding Sweetgrass

Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road,
my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first

through the woods, then out into the open fields
past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop

and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue,
green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.

I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age
and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening

a prayer for being here, today, now, alive
in this life, in this evening, under this sky.
~David Budbill “Winter: Tonight: Sunset” from While We’ve Still Got Feet

I try to remember this each day,
no matter how things feel,
no matter how tired or distracted I am,
no matter how worried, or fearful or heartsick–

I can grumble with the best of the them. There is camaraderie in shared grumbling, as well as an exponential increase in dissatisfaction as everyone shares their misery. Some relationships, indeed even political movements, are based on collaborative cynicism, dark humor and just plain complaining.

But I know better. I’ve seen where grousing leads and I feel it aching in my bones when I’m steeped in it. The sky is grayer, the clouds are thicker, the cold is chillier, the night is darker–on and on to its overwhelming suffocating conclusion.

I have the privilege to choose joy, to turn away from the bleak. I can find the single ray of sun and stand in it, absorbing and equipping myself to be radiant when others need it more than me. This is not putting on a “happy face” — instead joy adopts me, holds me close in the tough times and won’t abandon me. Though at times joy may be temporarily behind a cloud, I know it is there even when I can’t see it.

Joy is mine to choose because joy has chosen me, so I share it here with you – our very existence distilled down to this moment of beauty.

One breath, one blink, one pause, one whispered word: thanks.

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Still Do Now

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When goats don’t want to move,
they don’t make sounds.

They fold legs at bald knees,
bend rough necks to earth,
and just sink down.

They never

rant, rail,
protest, declaim,
debate, explain, and then,
head bowed, plod meekly
forward anyway,

as I did
as a child—
and still do now.
~Marcia Slatkin “The Virtue of Trusting One’s Own Mind”

I was always a compliant kid; I wouldn’t raise a fuss at home or at school when asked to do something I didn’t want to do. But, inside my head, my protests were loud, prolonged and dramatic, my arguments on point and logical. I just learned to keep my opinions to myself in order to keep the peace. I did what I had to do.

These days, I might not be so demure anymore. When the world is asking unreasonable things, I tend to say what I think. That doesn’t always go well so let the chips fall where they may.

There is something to be said for plodding ahead meekly, having said what needed to be said. The world needs plodders in order to keep turning. We can’t all throw tantrums; we need to face the hard things head on.

But at least, you will know how I feel about it…

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