In our eyes

The world is a macrocosm of the man,
and the man, a microcosm of the world.
What is true of one is true of the other.
Our lives are formed in the main
by the flow of missed opportunities,
our action/reaction selves
skewed by our mistakes,
as all the while we fume and foment
never noticing success is not happiness,
nor seeing salvation and joy lie before us
in plain sight.

So the world, forced by willful ignorance
to drag untold tonnage of hapless memories,
called ‘history’,
and distracted by its lust to hoard even more,
joins the chase for hides of outward glory
assisted by hell’s hounds,
and misses every worthy event and personage
ever to cross its threshold
or pitch a tent in its domain.
Seeking what cannot be found,
the world, and the man,
both forfeit what is theirs.

Today the Church sings
the birth of an unknown Jewish girl.
Unknown, even unnamed by the world of her time,
never recognized as anyone,
she passed her life in obscurity,
except when she was exposed
in the circle of her family and clan
as a possible adulteress,
a pregnant maiden betrothed to an old man,
with nothing to defend herself and her honor
but the words of an angel,
that she alone saw.

Yet, while the world was looking the other way,
making much of the latest royal scandals
and divine pronouncements of distant emperors,
this virgin went about growing up,
serving her aged parents,
later only her widowed mother,
until she came of marriageable age,
and a different type of history,
hidden from the world but hallowed before the ages,
began to unfold in the closet of her heart.

Without ever knowing it,
of an obscure people that the only God had chosen
for her humanity as well as His,
she became the last and most faithful among them,
without learning
having surpassed by her silent surrender
to the Divine philanthropy
all their most sacrosanct notables,
as well as their prophets, priests and kings.
Hidden from her by her humility,
from the world by its pomp,
she was crowned Queen.

The last true Hebrew,
and the first hearer of the Good News,
she beckons both to her ancestral people,
the children of Israel,
and to the race of those begotten of her
by the Spirit of her Divine Son, the Christians,
inviting them and us
to the feast prepared before all worlds,
to that banquet for which she was born,
and for which we too, through her, are both born
and made welcome, all first-borns.

The world has missed her birth, her life,
her falling asleep, her leave-taking,
just as it missed the man-coming of her Divine Son,
His crowning with thorns,
His enthronement on the Cross,
His hell-harrowing rest,
His abundant rising from the tomb,
and His man-taking into the Divine Nature.

But we need not follow in its wake.
Our Lady Theotokos, Mary of Nazareth,
the unwedded Bride,
is in our eyes.
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When love becomes man

Love is beyond caste, class, and creed.
Whoever or whatever one thinks God is,
or if one believes in no god at all,
if he should do what he sees Jesus doing,
then God has in fact
come down to earth once again.

Hindus have Rama,
they have Krishna,
yes, God come down to earth in ancient times,
as king, as savior.

Christians have our Jesus,
yes, and if we listen carefully to Him,
He tells us to do what we see Him doing.
That is, in our faith,
how we believe Christ comes to us
and lives among us again,
when love becomes man,
then man becomes love.

Just as Krishna fed the whole world
from a single grain of rice,
and Jesus fed five thousand,
not once but twice,
from a basket containing only a few pita breads
and some fish,
so the Divine Nature shows Himself to us
in people who lovingly feed
and serve others.

Love, love, love,
yes, that is the meaning of life.
Now, when shall we begin?
xx

Distant, purple mountains

The Lord is merciful, brother,
and He loves us more than we love ourselves,
and He fears more for our safety and salvation than we do,
and He is only trying very hard
to not let us slip out of His tender hands,
which hold us loosely enough for us to experience freedom
and taste danger,
yet tightly enough to keep us from falling,
unless we really want to.

Praise be to Jesus Christ,
who does not listen to those who accuse His lovers,
even when it is the lovers themselves
who, by fear or doubt, accuse.
For He comes not to judge the world,
but to give His life for it, for us,
for you, brother, and for me.
And the narrow way to which He leads us
will always lie ahead on our path,
not at our choosing,
not when we want it,
but when we expect it least,
are unable in fact to see it for what it is
until we have, carried in His arms,
passed through it.

The way I take today seems so wide
I can see the walls of the chasm
only as distant purple mountains
on the horizons north and south,
but I know that the wide river of my life
was a trickle at its source
and, near its end, passing through those gates of fire,
will again be a trickle,
but to the sea it flows,
into that calm though restless sea of the Lord of all,
who shall take me by the hand, look at me,
and say 'beloved'
as together we walk on that endless shore.
And you, dear brother, with Him, with me, are one.
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