THE HEALING OF DARKNESS

How it just struck me! 

As lightening bolts from the cosmologies above! 

That: it is during the profundity of sleep that our bodies are healed on the molecular, chemical, and psychic levels. 

Were it not for our daily dose of  darkness, 

we would be most broken.  

And, it struck me again and again, 

in the sultry bisque night, in that Tomb where the Light lay amongst the Dark, the Dark was resurrection and Life.

Yes, it struck me yet again, yet again and again!

that Christ became whole for us

from darkness; and in darkness was he risen as starbursts 

for me. 

SOUL HAIKU

How barren a soul

empty and cascading ... yes, 

  to hold close pure Flame.

HOLINESS OF PRAYER

  Something occurs while the veil of prayer envelopes me.  

It is as if there is a trance, 

a dance, taking me far elsewhere.

Shallow and sweet is Her Breath  

and the Presence is over me ... over me, 

over me mute as rush weed in winter.

Oh, for I am icy pond/ 

ALIVE! amidst buried stillness,  

singly with Christ, my sweeter Love.

 

 

SPIRITUAL EYES

And, when I quiet; become still and pray,

it is as if a fine layer of cloud/ a mist/ through damped morning Forest

covers my eyes and I travel to heaven leaving what is seen 

to become unseen.  

        Through the veil, my heart greets him

and, at once, I hum.

We know the words, which falling effortlessly, drop as dew upon blue-blades.

Commingling, we enter deep through the fogginess, 

loving the other through gray invisibilities of 

delight/standing outside Time.

O!  Prayer: sheath of silence/ pall of Holiness; stay Now with me.  Let 

me live among your fecund bogs; your greeny trees: motionless, open-mouth & mute

witnessing to your grand Love!

 

KAIROS AND KRONOS

Has this happened to you?

    

     You're all nervous and anxious about something.  You place enormous energy into this 'thing'. Much time is spent.  Hours, days, sometimes a lifetime. Then, something happens which dispels this 'consuming charge' and you are calmed, quieted, resolved, and say words to this effect: "Oh, things worked out just fine".  Whereupon, you nag yourself for spending all that precious, won't ever be returned to you Time, being anxious and afraid.

     It has happened to me.  What I've learned, however, is that ' that everything worked out just fine' feeling is Kairos.  God's Time.  In God's time, all has been worked out and ; all has been done and planned; and Kronos is what we struggle and become worried over as humans.  

     But, you can elect to be calm and still and silent and sit at Christ's feet awhile as Kronos catches up with Kairos ... which in my life, always seems with grace to be. Things, most generally, work for the Good.  Have you encountered that old expression?  Things work out for the Good. 

     That axiom is pleasant to realize and more so to live and incarnate.    Now, this is not to suppose a pre-deterministic world and God is nothing more than deus ex machina.  I really hope not for free will prospers us; however, things seem overall to fall into a natural place in the final analyses. Obviously, not to halt working toward goals and/or personal, corporate victories; no, but, it is simply to say the process; its finality; its completion are well in progress. For us, it is to breathe and allow Kairos within Kronos to occur with thanksgiving and gratefulness of heart.

How each of us are coveted by divine mercy, how all of our Radiances are noticed, counted, and held in honor by Him who blesses.

Do we not carry within our own souls our sacred dawns and twilights given to each individually?  Oh, yes, how tender a God we love who gives what is necessary, spiritually profitable, and communally beneficial. 

We may, in our littleness, ponder that the benefit is otherwise; but, we are small with even more petite compasses.  None possess the grander scheme so none can judge truly.  

Kairos being manifested in Kronos, indeed; stillness teaches this. 

  

     

PRESENTS FOR THE PRESENCE

Outside, through rusted rails, beyond the Palms, passed arcing whispers of windy Pepper trees and violet cloud, 

advent is come. 

Inky and coal-dark, so long past did those three men 

aim for that jumpy star.

How brutal the trails of sand and rock as they hunted for the Child, the Presence, the new Now. Did they cast their magic as they traveled the night winds 

searching and Hoping that the Saviour was nigh so soon to be?  

And, bearing presents for The Presence, Were they the first 

to worship, those elect, those chosen, those Wise Men, three ... there in that 

spilled blackness of a cold and color-foiled night 

echoing forth True Life.

HEDONISM OR LIFE ABUNDANT

'...and you shall have life and have it abundantly ...'

In this most material of ages, perhaps since the Roman Empire, having life abundantly can be experienced, it seems, as modern day hedonists.  The Oxford Dictionary states that hedonism is: the ethical theory that pleasure ( in the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life ...

Read that: The satisfaction of desires is the highest good and (aim) of human life.  Now, as nun, that is alarmingly frightening.  Unless, of course, the desire is qualified.  If, the desire is helping neighbor, assisting the poor and vulnerable, visiting the imprisoned, clothing the naked; loving the unlovable; then, that form of hedonism would line up with 'having life abundantly' and would synchronize.   However, to have it qualified as self-serving and self-driven entirely; well, that is a problem, I sense.

We live in Communion.  We live in Community.  According to Gospel dictates,  we are at the service of Christ through others, in others, and with others.  To obtain wealth for the mere sake of pleasing our outlandish needs and desires, falling then into that realm of today's hedonistic proclivities is a counter-Christ message of loving the other to simply love the other.  

I ponder my desires, my needs and some don't fall into that radicalism of Jesus' offering of not hedonism for the sake of Self; but, instead, the abundancy of giftedness given for Neighbor. This gift to Neighbor always transfigures into gift unto self in forms of Joy; in forms of happiness; and in forms of deep, abiding, interior peace.

THE WHEAT AND THE TARES

" Let both grow together until the harvest; and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn."

So, here it is to look and wonder and pray. 

Here is the Sower and his field.  

The Sower is the Holy Magnificent One.

The Seed is the spirit inside each of us.

The Enemy is the world, with its cares and woes.

The Binding and burning is Transfiguration out of sin into righteousness.

I know the enemy and I know its wiles and crafty ways into a pure soul.  Children born are innocent.  Their lives are born in nobility and grace.  Yes,  we are clean and dewy and each of our inceptions and trails are chosen; people are met; incidents occur; pain and betrayal seek us out.  Our cares and woes and battles fatigue and fluster us; at times, profoundly alter us.  

That alteration or transformation may be the Goodness of all; or, for the Evil of all.  Lives are destroyed by falsity and error and lives are transfigured by ruling fate and the overwhelming Grace of God/Creator Being.  

Have you been there?    

Have you witnessed sheer and unspeakable Beauty rise like a pond's wisp from dung?

Have you observed power, prestige, privilege fall to slink into its diametrical contrast?

The parable here is about Goodness, Temptation, Transformation. 

The transforming may be good and it may be not so good in our cultural estimation, depending upon through which lens we peer.  This parable can be lived inside out; that is, the good seed upon fertile, fecund ground, comes to final fruition of seed sown upon rocks which birds eat and nothing ever grows with temptation everywhere.  That realism is difficult to know and saddens one to see;  yet, it is there in our world amongst us. That backward process I have seen amongst my own: its poignancy of pain is palpable.  

What is seemingly more profitable is the way Jesus lays it for us: A movement into betterment and brilliance, deep change of inner formation, going far, far into the glory which is God.  The Good Sower planting deep the good seed upon a willing, graced ground: Is that not our elected, most longed for path?

PURITAS CORDIS

Purity of heart springs forth from the very womb, the very depth, the Heart of Christ.  The Desert Fathers sought 'puritas cordis';  as well as thousands more from generation to generation.  The meat of it strives toward ascetical perfection.

I admit, I, consciously, work inwardly and outwardly for puritas cordis, for total absorption of God within.  Indeed, each single action or thought or statement or carriage or manner of being, for me, is filtered through this lens of purity, to please the Holy, the solely Divine.  Lining up with Scriptural and Gospel tenets, how I try to aim for this impossible victory; and, as human, fail; and, as human, pick myself up through Grace and wind once more toward the singularity of sacredness each of us are promised.  

Thomas Merton says " .... this is the reason for the monk's existence ... puritas cordis". Admittedly, it is the reason for my existence.  The reason for my existence as nun is to become of flame of living love for the other, for the stranger, for the misfit, for the downcast, sorrowful, and heartbroken.  If puritas cordis is closely at all achieved through my insistency of will, through the grace of our Creator; it is for the other, through the cleansing of Self and 'the old man'.  As nun, ascetical practices are deliberated upon the premise that heaven can be touched on this earthly plane; that, God can be seen and heard here in this grounded experience we call earth; and that sacred union with Him is possible.  

This archaic, ancient code of purity exists within me.   Predicating our human efforts toward the Holy, seeking the One, the Sacred Being, the unspotted Lamb which washes me into the ultimate freedom called Love.   

Purity is nothing less than a Living fire, the constant furnace of love toward Neighbor; toward Christ; toward myself.  Puritas cordis is the incarnate acceptance of Goodness elected; of grace endowed with wisdom; of knowledge and action albeit bestowed with simple gifts of contemplation and quietude.  

Those are the strident tabs of Joy to which this nun seeks, runs, and labors ever forevermore.  

BENDING

     I see them attached to the sticks of the bending trees and they do bend and bend.   There is no thing in order save the sway and movement, save the stillness when the air is mute.  

     And, I fall and swing as I watch the leaves upon the sticks upon the trees, attached, moving in freedom, happiness and joy.

     Our globe, too, bends and bends still more through the galaxy of lights, through the horizons of colors and pure passions. 

     

     The firmaments undulate attached like leaves upon sticks upon this multi-verse of God, bending, bending, bending furthermore.

     And, I ask:  Is not Freedom that bend, that bending stillness upon the stiff sticks to which I see?  

     

     I am crescent moon upon the sweeps of air guiding me, moving me, bending me, bending me further and still further into the muted Holy whom I praise, whom I sing and gather unto myself tonight.

     Here, upon the tree of Freedom, upon that tree of allowance, is the bend of vast openness, the sacred motion of all living thing which moves and bends and bends further deep, bending ever over my unsaid God.