An Alarm Bell In The Night

Dear Family and Friends,

I keep hearing what Jefferson called in 1820 “an alarm bell in the night.”  The bell he heard was over the growing potential for civil war because of the unresolved slavery issue.  The bell I hear is for destructive civil strife and the potential for a complete breakdown in our body politic.  As I imaged the matter several months ago:  America is encamped on the slopes of a giant volcano.  We feel and hear the rumbles; in reality, the mountain may blow up.  

Hence, what I am hearing is far more than an alarm bell.  Our civilization is on the verge of an enormous eruption.  How long can a people endure in history when they betray themselves and their own founding?  How long can western civilization endure when it disowns the two spiritual forces which engendered our civilization:  the Greek discovery of divine reason as the constituent of our common humanity, and the Judaeo-Christian response to the living God?  The Enlightenment perverted reason from divine-human mutual participation into a natural possession, a world-immanent power for “changing the world;” and the same self-styled “enlightened intellectuals” threw out the God of Christianity. We are reaping the consequences.  Nietzsche’s terrifying vision of a civilization which has murdered God hurling into an empty abyss is coming to pass in our midst.

I may have to dedicate more of my time and energy to diagnosing and writing on the political upheavals in the midst of which we are living.  Such is the work of political philosophy:  to diagnose the spiritual-political problems, and to serve in some small way in their therapy.  As my brother Andy has said repeatedly, “Pearl Harbor is my calling.”  My calling is and seems to be the different kind of Pearl Harbor in which we are now living. I cannot ignore it.  

That I must use whatever skills I have to analyze, diagnose, and perhaps in some very small way help heal these divisions, is evident to me.  Although I do not know this to be the case, it is possible that it is now too late to preserve the United States of America.  Political communities come into being and perish. They die either from internal forces ripping them apart, or because they are overcome by a greater power from abroad. The greatest danger threatening us is not terrorism, Russia, or China, but ourselves: we are dissolving from within as a sizable part of our body politic has lost its grounding in divine reality and in common sense (reason).  In a word, millions of us are out of control.  Without internal order, either we must be controlled by force, or we perish.  Control by force is, in effect, political slavery, and nothing that we should allow to come to pass.  But if we will not control ourselves, what or who else will control us?  This is one of the central themes of millennial political philosophy:  control from within (rational self-control), or dominance from without (power, force, or drugs).  It was a major concern of our Founding Fathers, who left spiritual-rational formation to families, churches, local communities, not to the government (nor to the newly established Federal government).  

A brief note in response to a question one of you raised:  It is conceivable that a human being may be self-consciously agnostic, and still be grounded in reality; and one can “believe in God,” and be swirling in illusions. Truth lies at the level of experience, not verbal formulations.  Those who do good are grounded in the Good, however it is symbolized or expressed; those who do evil do not have that grounding.  Jesus’ words are the measure:  “A tree is known by its fruits.”  The human responsibility is to engage in the search for truth and to seek to do what is right, and not to think that one has arrived at truth, or is doing right without checking one’s own destructive or lower tendencies.  Where there is hatred, violence, ill-will, drug abuse, illusions, and so on, they are not from God, and they are forces tearing us apart.  Any adult can see and understand that our American political society has become rife with hatred, violence, drug abuse, mindless entertainment, disordering music, intellectual-mental drugs (ideologies), and godlessness.  

In short: What shall we do?  What must each of us do to serve God (as we understand Him) and country?  How is one to live in the midst of a society that is breaking apart, and seems to be intent upon killing itself? What is your responsibility? What is mine? Asking the right questions is ever a good beginning.

"No, I Am Not Gaga"

Dear J,

I have given some thought to your claim:  “You seem to be absolutely gaga over the Trump. I think you are in love with him!  Either that, or you are in love with the fact that you sagely (I admit) predicted his winning the election. If the latter is the case, I urge you to get over him. Trump is not a decent human being.”

No, I am not in love with Trump.  My support of him, and that of those with whom I have spoken, is not based on the man at all.  That is why “the Deplorables” were not unnerved by the personal attacks against him.  It has been far less about Trump the man, and far more about the movement for which he has been the loudest and most prominent voice in the past year and a half.  I will not write many details, because nearly everything that I would include you would take as a personal or an ideological insult against “Progressives,” as you style yourselves.  I will sketch briefly in more general terms lest you think that I am personally attacking you or people you admire, and that is not my intention at all.

As I see it, our country is dying.  We have been dying for decades, at least since the 1950’s, but with signs of decadence and decay extending far back in time.  Our Founding had its flaws, and some of them showed up quickly, and contributed to the horrific “Civil War.”  By roughly 1900, despite much goodness in our people, real problems were evident and increasing.  

The sense I have had for decades is that our political elites, our rulers, and the main institutions of our country—government, churches, large businesses, educators, entertainment, mass media, and so on—have largely betrayed our country, often without even knowing it.  To use a simple phrase, “We have been sold a bill of goods.”  Or to put the blame back on us, the body politic, “we chose poorly.”  Yes, we Americans have made some bad choices.

If you were to sit and listen to many of folks who have favored the election of Donald Trump, you would find that he has been accepted as an act of rebellion against “the establishment” which has been destroying us.  Again, to give details means that you will take offense, so I must be silent.  Trump has been seen as a protest vote against our political elites, the mass media, the educational establishment, internationalism, “free trade” ideology, and so on.  Trump gives voice to a popular uprising against what we have done to ourselves, and allowed our leaders to exacerbate.  

If you think that I or others who like Trump are “in love with him,” you are not seeing the larger issues that motivate us at all.  And that failure to see the real problems is precisely one of the foremost problems. Indeed, the problems facing our country are enormous. Not only are we dying, but we as a people in history have been blind to many of the real problems.  Trump takes over in a country which is decaying from within, and in a world which has become enormously dangerous. Policies over the past decades have been disastrous, or not truly beneficial at best.  And these policies are far larger than Obama or Democrats or Progressives, etc.  Both political parties have failed us, leaders from both parties have been sleep-walking and mislead and damaged our country.  As one example that may not hurt you, I cite the libertarian ideology of “absolute free trade,” and the internationalist belief in “open borders.”  Both parties have advanced these causes at our national expense.  Trump voices a strong reaction against such policies.  That is why many of us have supported him.  He is not a panacea, but promises at least a slowing down of our national dissolution.  Hence, his simple, understandable slogans and promises struck a chord in our hearts:  “We will build the wall,” “free trade must be fair,” and in a nutshell, “America first.”  Such are the words we have been longing to hear from our elected leaders.  And even his bluntness and rejection of “political correctness” has appealed to us, because we have seen in Trump not a politician who can dance and skate, but a leader who will take incoming hits for his truthfulness—signs of courageous leadership.  Trump promises to be a real leader, and not a man who wishes to “lead from behind.”

As for Trump “not being a decent human being,” it is typically American to portray political leaders we do not like as bad, evil, decadent, authoritarian, and so on.  Every human being has flaws—you and I included.  What is needed in a good leader is sound political insight and judgment, prudence, courage to act, energy.  If he or she is a good human being, so much the better.  But as James Madison wrote in the Federalist, “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”  That is why our Founders put so much effort into constructing a system of “checks and balances,” and would never have envisioned or promoted the enormous massing of power in the Presidency that has emerged, especially since Lincoln. This undue concentration of power in political leaders and in enormous institutions is one of the major problems facing our badly wounded body politic.  

The foremost problems in our body politic, however, are not political. They are spiritual, intellectual, and moral.  But I know that you, as well as most of our “elites,” are very uncomfortable in hearing about these matters, so I omit them for now.  Suffice it simply to note this:  It does not go well for a country which untethers itself from its grounding.  And I quote the Russian spiritualist and novelist, Dostoyevsky, who wrote in the 1880’s: “The West has lost Christ; that is why it is dying; that is the only reason it is dying.”  Our civilization has forsaken its roots and its grounding in divine reality, and we see the consequences of this rebellion everywhere.

"Consider Your Call, Brethren"

What is your calling?  How do you seek to live Christ?  How do you understand your discipleship to Jesus Christ?  One’s “call to discipleship,” one’s entire life in Christ, is and must be a major ongoing concern in the life of every Christian.  The call to follow Christ is not something that happens once, nor is it something to be safely encased in sacraments, such as baptism and Eucharist. Nor is it something for priests and religious only.  One either lives one’s vocation daily, ever seeking to be more faithful to God in Christ, or one does not.  

Sacramentalism would take form in such beliefs as: “I was baptized as an infant; I was confirmed; I attend Mass fairly regularly.”  Sharing in these sacramental actions is a beginning, and part of the foundation for your life in Christ.  But it is far from sufficient.  Ultimately, your calling from God is to be true to yourself, to be true to the human being God creates you to be day in, day out.  But again, that does not mean you just “do your own thing,” and sing out, “I did it my way.”  That will not do, for it would be a godless existence, like that lived by many in our society.  To be the human being God created you to be, and continually recreates you to be, you and I must be ever attentive to the Spirit, ever listening, ever obeying.  Fidelity to one’s vocation is not a one-time affair, but an ever-ongoing response to the Spirit—to God’s presence in you and with you.   

 The beginning of your calling, your vocation, reaches into the mind of God, into which we cannot peer.  All of human history, in which we share, is relevant for your calling.  All that has unfolded in Christ, and surely in the People of God, Israel, and in the Catholic Church, is part of your vocation. You are not an isolated individual, even though each of us must ever answer personally and directly to God, whose Judgment is Now.  No one can escape the searching eye of Heaven, which constantly searches us, tests us, challenges us, transforms us with our free cooperation.  Your entire existence, from the moment of your creation-conception, is part of your calling—of the human being you are in God. 

And yet, there are certain occasions in our life—often when the bottom seems to drop out, or “the rug is pulled out from under us”—when we get shaken to the core, and either wholeheartedly surrender ourselves to God in love, or we run away and hide.  There are moments when God breaks into your consciousness in some powerful way, and you must respond wholeheartedly.  To do less than give all to God would be a subtle and perhaps unknown form of betrayal.  “You cannot serve God and wealth,” as Jesus says.  You cannot serve God and self, as in “I will do as I wish—it’s my life.”  No, it is not simply yours.  “You were bought with a price,” and now belong to Christ.  Your life is to allow Christ to live in you, with you, through you.  That is your essential vocation. 

Do not think about flying to Indonesia to “concert the unbelievers.”  Do not engage in mindless talk about “changing the world.”  Have you not yet discovered that you are nearly powerless to change yourself?  The best that anyone can do is to cooperate with the wisdom and love of God, who is ever at work reforming us, molding us from within—to the extent that we freely cooperate. God does not treat us as puppets, or playthings, or as things that He can do with as He wills. The LORD Almighty respects our unique freedom, and constantly demands us freely to surrender, freely to love, and “freely give, for freely you have received.”   

Living in complete and unreserved response and obedience to God is your vocation and mine. That is what it means to be a man or woman in Christ, and a child of Abraham, “our father in faith.”

Three Poems

 An introduction to three poems, which immediately follow:

K____, I do not recall if I sent you one or more of these poems. They followed each other closely in time, and I consider them a unit.  Strangely, all three men were alive between 1875-1900:  Rilke, Saint-Saëns, Nietzsche. I do not even know why I wrote them, except I wanted to.  The poem to Rilke is a reflection on a short poem of his, “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” and particularly the last words, which really provoked wonder in me.  The poem to Saint-Saëns reflects on a 10-minute section of the 1st movement of his 3rd symphony, a passage which has spoken strongly to me since I discovered it by chance during my undergraduate years.  To Nietzsche:  You know my fascination with him. It is not just one thought, or one work, that I reflect on, but his life, his spirituality, if you will--his descent. I can never read Nietzsche without being mindful of what happened to him.  Unlike his well-known atheistic biographer, Walter Kaufman, I do not think that Nietzsche’s mental breakdown was really caused primarily by physical illness.  One can see it coming fairly early in his writing career.  He came to live what he expressed.  That is how I see him.  Also, you may know that I love Nietzsche as a brother human being, and even as a friend.  I feel close to him—when I read Nietzsche, he is speaking directly to me.  So I do not try to write from a hostile position.  

That is more introduction to these poems than I have ventured on perhaps any poems I have written.  And I will add:  no rhyme used.  Free verse, as one finds in my favorite 20th-century poem:  Eliot’s “Four Quartets.”  (Or in Shakespeare’s plays; or in the rhymeless, rhythmical poems by Whitman).  The subjects did not lend themselves to rhyme, in my view.  They lend themselves to thought briefly expressed, which poetry engenders and demands.

Early this month, I wrote the 5 “Biblical Poems” and then these 3, which belong together, and perhaps with the biblical poems that were written immediately before them.  Who knows—I do not--another one may be waiting to be written.  

    ******

To Rilke

“You must change your life.”
Yes, my friend, your words leap from the page
of your glorious, sensuous poem—
but I do not understand why that question arises
from gazing at the archaic-luminous torso,
or why you wrote those words as you did—
as if erupting from Apollo’s powerful chest.

Urgently and naggingly, I must wonder:
Can anyone really change one’s life?
If so, to what possible extent?  And how?
Can these blind eyes even see themselves?
“I was empowered in a world of strife,
before I had the power to change my life.”
Those words ring true to our tortoise-condition.

And yet, dear friend, your words still burn—
a red-hot sword thrust into my inner soul,
with so much force did you thrust forth
from Apollo’s bust to your unsuspecting reader.
Your words have assumed your god’s authority,
ripping off all pretense, cutting off all escape,
as you painfully penetrate your reader’s heart.

“You must change your life.”
In the light of such translucent beauty
and because of this tremendous lover
I, even I, must change my life—
a life perhaps more formless than Apollo’s remains,
still alive for eyes and mind bewitched by beauty.
And the change of life must begin in the same stillness
and concentrated spirit in which you so lovingly gazed.

    ******

To Camille Saint-Saëns

Buried within your “organ symphony,”
beginning half way through the first movement,
you unfold and develop an exquisite melody
far more than a sweet-nostalgic song—
a transformation of the somber Dies Irae,
drawing your attentive listener into bliss.

Not damnation’s threat, nor fear of Judgment Day,
but the most gentle Diotima leading one upward,
past the storms of life and of passion’s unrest
to the edge of eternal happiness reached
only through the narrow gate called death—
from here to there, in sheer self-transcendence.

Death not of everything known and loved, but of striving,
wishing, desiring—a complete letting go
and surrender into the night of eternal love—
music drawing the attentive listener to embrace death.
You entice a soul to make a joyful surrender
allowing a transient being to depart now in peace.

Your music does not force but invites self-surrender
by filling the heart with what it most desires,
liberating from loss, promising sustained bliss.
Beauty draws the lover to forget himself and enter in-
to a world not whirled but stilled and stilling,
entranced in beauty’s eternal passing.

******

To Nietzsche

Who are you, Nietzsche, behind your masks?
Do you know?  Or have you played your masking games
so long that you no longer know yourself?
Did not Freud declare that you know yourself
more truly than anyone who ever lived?  I wonder.
You are indeed incisive, brilliant, most complex.

You have unmasked the darker side of humankind
by analysis and by embodying the darkness
more cunningly than anyone I know,
reducing our drives to the will to power,
the love of truth to the will to deceive,
all that is good to a human contrivance.

And still, you daemonic man, you word-magician,
your inner agony evokes from me
a wish to befriend you in your loneliness,
consoling you in your self-enclosèd-self—
but you would discern mere sentimental love;
and how could you receive another’s gift?

Profoundly you envoice the demons of this age,
articulating our unspeakable darknesses
lurking beneath mere bourgeois consciousness
more bitingly than anyone else had dared—
an all-consuming fire for one who draws near,
you scorch and torch your epigones.

The demons you unleashed unleashed on you
fleet-footed flaming Furies pursuing you to death
after burning every mask from off your face
incinerating your reasoning beyond all reason
leaving you entombed without thought or speech
a warning voice to all who dare:  gnothi seauton.

Embers To Fire

The wood stove is cold upon rising, metal cold,

barely 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside

55 in the dimly lit room,

cold air echoing from the windows.  

No fire has yet been started in the stove upstairs,

but downstairs, in the laundry room—

an ash log, not fully consumed in the night,

its underbelly still glowing red. 

Winding some packing paper around cedar chips,

wielding the ax to split several slender strips

now set atop the paper, near the burning embers,

and still more wood placed upon the heap.

Soon a fire burns brightly in that large stove,

then some cedar and pine set beside the fire,

flue fully open, door ajar, to build a blaze,

split wood waiting and ready to burst aflame.

Not so upstairs, no red coals smoldering

cold metal feeling hard as death,

the night’s last log barely burned

yet lying lifeless in its ashen grave.  

No embers to kindle a new fire here,

nothing to stir up into dancing flames—

no fire, no warmth, no friendliness

to warm my outside and soul within.

What shall I do?  Half awake I must wonder—

scraps of paper, slivers of hewn cedar,

and smaller limbs from a felled pine tree—

a match, a flame, some wind, then fire.

Fire burning by my side, warming

slowly penetrating out through the chill air,

light from flames crackling, expanding metal:

and I, too, rekindled at 0400. 

Epiphany 2017

What is joined in consciousness is separated in physical reality.  And what is joined in consciousness is separated in stories to communicate meaning.  The reality of Christ, definitive presence of God-in-man, is the truth of humanity. We celebrate this reality in every Eucharist. But for the sake of our limited understanding, what is truly one is separated into parts.  And so at Christmastide, the mystery of God in us, of incarnation, is separated into the birth of Jesus Christ, and then the Epiphany of Christ to the Gentiles, symbolized in the traveling Magi. Even children can appreciate the parts; our adult task is to bring the parts back together in the truth of consciousness and action.

You may have noticed over the years that the evangelist Luke has no need for the feast of the Epiphany, because he has the equivalent experience take place in the scene he sets for Jesus’ birth. No Magi or astrologers are mentioned coming to see what God has done for humankind, but lowly shepherds, the “poorest of the poor,” representing all those who are open to what God is doing here and now, with minds not limited to beliefs about past events. The shepherds live in the present of God, under God, and so are moved by God to find His Presence in the new-born Christ. Open to God, we behold God by faith. The evangelist Matthew has a different tale to tell, and wants to emphasize that Christ has come for all peoples (as the angels announce in Luke’s Gospel), and so has the Gentiles represented by three men, attuned to heavenly signs, journeying from the East. That the Magi recognize the divine Presence in the baby Jesus is artfully symbolized by their gifts, as described in our familiar Christmas carol:  incense pointing to divinity present; gold witnessing to the true ruler of humankind; myrrh foreshadowing the saving death of Christ for all.  

From beautiful stories and rich symbolic meanings one needs to return again and again to the truth of spiritual experience.  For our foremost goal is not to tell stories or even to think about their
meaning, but to grow into a deeper and lasting union with the God present to the consciousness of every human being open to receive him. Genuine openness is a demanding spiritual work, requiring prayer, study, recollection, action, love. That many refuse God’s gift of presence is symbolized by Matthew’s bloody story of the slaughter of infants in Bethlehem, ordered by the wicked Herod, a shrunken soul jealous for his own power. We may have obstacles in our hearts and lives that prevent us from living in the presence of the presence of God. And so our task includes reflecting on habitual and actual ways in which we fail to respond wholeheartedly, or let our awareness of God shining into our minds be obscured by the smoke of worldly preoccupations. The task of openness to the divine light shining into consciousness is endless. 

The reality of Epiphany is now—for you, for me.  Our Christian and human duty is to enkindle in our hearts a flame of the fire of God’s love, which means allowing his love to flood in. What good is it for us to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus, as we did on Christmas, and refuse to live in the light shining in? If God is not here, then where could he be sought? The stable and the manger in Bethlehem are gone, or just rebuilt monuments to what God has done. But God is here and now; living in his light, love, peace is indeed the constant gift and burden of our lives.  

Blessed New Year to each and to all.

Thoughts Ater Rising

Eyes first opened, covers pushed back, up in bed

Chaucer’s words sleeping all the night with open ee-ye,

so pricks them nature in their `corages,’ 

`than longen folk’ to go on `pilgirmmages’ 

from every shire’s end of ‘Engelond, 

to Caunterbury they wende’… Empty bladder.  Start the fires.

Pull on coveralls, downstairs to my calefactory,

laundry with a large wood stove, still warm,

red coals, fragments of cedar added, split wood

providing a desired-hot office for Raymonde.

Coals smoldering, fire rekindled up above

providing warmth for the living room 

temperature still falling already -10 F  -23 C

world still whirled here and so I am awaking

warm inside my quiet-friendly rectory.

It was not only cool that greeted me on rising;

the lovely humble Christmas tree luminous

standing silently in the living room, shining

brightly seen or unseen, saying nothing,

speaking silently by silence to silence.

Drinking coffee comes right to mind—wake up juice— 

Instant should suffice early building and tending fires

after letting Moses out business-like before

he finds relief atop a snow drift in the kennel yard

under a sliver moon set in frigid-black heaven-sea.

Fragments of dreams return to consciousness:

again in a monastery, this time with Sr. Marielle,

dear friend and sister in Christ, welcoming pilgrims

seeking spiritual refreshment with Benedictines

gathering them in their warmly lit calefactory.

Today January 3rd, Voegelin’s birthday,

and first day of trading for the year—

Fox Business: market futures up, green letters,

and I wonder what I might buy for my Roth-IRA,

freshly stocked with New Year’s contribution.

0320 when I first saw a clock, 

now 0426 on my Apple Watch,

sipping Taster’s Choice, jotting down these notes,

not listening to market analysts’ banter

but striving to find and build a little consciousness.

Before Mass - 02 January 2017

How prayerful can one be with television,

with snow needing to be shoveled,

with wood needing to be split,

with fires needing to be kept burning,

with a dog needing to be walked and fed?

How prayerful can one be with politics,

news, weather, sports, entertainment,

emails to be written and read,

tweets to be scanned and retweeted,

with a dog needing to go out.

And the necessities of nature,

and cleaning up and shaving,

brushing teeth, combing hair,

taking off one’s favorite coveralls, 

putting on clothes more fit for public exposure.

Looked over the readings for Mass,

have given them quick thought, 

decided on a theme to be preached,

eaten enough food to sustain me,

and sipped more coffee to be awake.

But I am not really awake, am I?

If this is wakefulness, what then is sleep?

Yes, my eyes are heavy after a busy week-end,

I feel fatigue after all the explosions the night before.

And soon I must depart for morning Mass.

Where in the noise and busyness is God?

Where in my drowsiness is clarity of thought?

Where in my passions is stillness and quiet?

Where in my heart is a longing for God—

and if not for God, for peace in his will?

If for a single moment I turn towards,

if I can will to turn towards the remembered one,

if I can allow his mind to shine into mine,

and be content with my poverty and smallness,

perhaps then the divine can use this tattered weed.

Come, holy Spirit, and fill the hearts of your faithful—

even in our faithlessness, or half-heartedness,

and warm our chilly wills and frozen fingers,

refresh us in our tiredness, and wake us up again—

You most generous giver of good gifts, come.

To My Brother, Paul

The Apostle Paul, by Rembrandt

You were Paul of Tarsus even when still Saul, 

a Hebrew born of Hebrews in an alien land,

fiercely zealous for the Law and traditions of elders,

a man considered “blameless” by yourself, no doubt,

until you were fiercely arrested by the fraudulent Christ.

According to Nietzsche, dear friend, you are the fraud,

the lying deceiver who gave birth to Christianity,

that most pathetic, womanish religion known to man—

you, filled with spite and overcome by a psychotic hallucination

self-convinced of your self-created self-deception.

And then I hear a more convincing song by Schütz,

“Saul, Saul, was vervolgst du mich”—

communicating the shattering of your consciousness,

not by a self-generated hallucination or wish,

but by God-in-Christ ripping you open wide.

Never again were you Paul alone, just you—

“For now I live, not I, but Christ lives in me”—

no mere religious belief, no formulaic faith,

but the living experience of a man raised up

from death-in-self to life enlivened by the risen Christ.

Your words, you know, are dynamite, 

and ever will be in domesticated Christianity, 

in these churches “that are tombs and sepulchers of God”—

for you are the voice of the experience of God in Christ,

as surely as Plato voices the God of the Beautiful and Good.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly, 

but then face to face.

Though outwardly we waste away, 

inwardly we are being renewed from glory to glory

until God is all in all.”

In Praise of Moses

Ish ha Elohim, Moses the god-man—

mummified by Deuteronomy,

revered by the children of Israel,

relegated to shadows by Christians 

seeking to protect the supremacy of Christ.

Who are you, true man of God,

chosen to receive the decisive revelation

of what by tradition we call “God”—

Ehyeh-asher-Ehyeh—I AM that I AM—

the one who broke into Moses’ consciousness?

Moses the man to whom the divine itself

irrupted into his very consciousness,

Moses the man who did not see or touch

but became one in spirit with the one he bore

lovingly to the people of God.

“The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth

came through Jesus Christ,” writes beloved John.

O Christians, open your eyes afresh to Moses,

who was himself full of grace and truth

if any man on earth ever was.

The man Moses encountered by the god unknown

out of the burning bush on Sinai,

is the man who became the carrier of Life itself,

the living in-breathing of the eternal I AM

to the Hebrew people, children of Abraham.

Having encountered the divine in Christ, you Christians,

can you not see and hear the same God speaking in Moses,

delivering in Moses, presenting itself 

in every tree, bush, and living thing,

radiant with the beauty and truth of God?

To Moses

If you are not Moses, then who are you
o little man of God, blessed soul
denied a home in heaven by heaven-bent souls,
but ever at home in this poor heart of mine,
and if in mine, how not in God’s?  

What is the fire I see still-smoldering in your heart,
though tame in eye, most gentle in your breast,
you love with a love that is more than love,
you most blessed soul and fellow creature of a day
here but today and away in a moment.

Who you are in yourself remains a mystery
but the who in you is the same who in me
the self-same I that dwells within the eye
and deeper down, unseen by wandering eyes
but glimpsed by the piercing arrow of love.

Jesus of Nazareth

Born a Jew, repackaged a Christian,

Man of humble birth, enrobed as a king,

Speaker of truth, falsified as political,

Real human being, enshrouded in myths,

One of us, yet interpreted as messiah.

The Christ that one encounters in Jesus

is no anointed king of Israel,

but the ever-present one who speaks

to every mind still-searching for truth

from everywhere, here and there.

You may be seen or unseen in your deeds,

heard or unheard in your words,

found or unfound in your loving presence

flowing into every living being,

as far as the mind can see

You who were present before I was

present to myself, you were here

drawing and pulling me into you,

towards I still know-not-what, but drawing

ever into a deeper, more hidden union.

You are the one speaking in the words of Jesus—

no messiah, no king, no revolutionary,

but the divine mind itself probing each,

enlightening, flooding the open stable

no longer just alone, but You in each, in all.

You who are nameless, called by many names—

Christ will do, if gently held—

or Jesus, hidden One, enlightening every soul

ever coming into the world, 

not once, but in every moment of consciousness.

Or perhaps of unconsciousness too, 

while the flowers sleep beneath the earth,

and sun has sunken far below the Zenith,

and nights clear and cold yet promising

your hidden presence to those who seek.

Of Mary and Joseph

“And the Word became flesh,” your flesh, our flesh,
and our flesh at each moment of ever-presenting presence,
the divine breaking forth in the listening heart,
in the spirit open to the transreal transformation
breaking in without destroying or binding.

“And Mary kept all these things in her heart,”
pondering, reflecting, thinking about what unfolded
and was enfolding her in unseen mystery—
Mary in the darkness of faith-filled love,
not in the certainty of so-called knowledge.

And Joseph, long kept in the darkness of a story,
a man of action, wordless father of the incarnate word,
father not father in the storied sense,
silent in the shadows of unenquiring minds,
speaking through and in the son obscured.

Joseph and Mary, most vividly seen to wondering eyes
not in themselves, their storied characters,
but in their son, their mysterious son,
whose words and deeds bespeak the wisdom of Israel,
and the loving parenting he richly received.

Mary our mother in the darkness of faith,
Joseph our father in the obedience of faith,
both together in the word still becoming flesh,
our flesh, at each moment of ever-presenting presence:
the Word becoming flesh this very day.

For Simeon

This little poem was not written for quick understanding, but deliberately reads as a puzzle, inviting thought if it is read.  Note:  “Ausculta” is the first word of St. Benedict’s Rule, and it is his “kitchen Latin” for the standard, “Osculta,” Listen! The German is simple enough, with a reference to a composition by Heinrich Schütz.  I modify Simeon’s words about Israel, drawing from a psalm, motivated by political reality. Two word-coinages were intended at the outset. A sense of overlapping of times and speakers is intended. There is a nod to T.S. Eliot’s “The Song of Simeon,” but probably a stronger borrowing from his intentional obscurantism to make one think and explore the engendering experience. 

Ausculta, o fili, ausculta,

when the rose blooms, and when it is still-embudded.

Hear my son Absalom my son

would that I had died for you—my son, my daughter

and let my cry—these tears—come unto you.

For here I am, yet not I, an olding man,

seeing from Nebo the promised land 

and not yet allowed to enter.

And yet, ever entering and leaving

and entering again into your promised land.

Now, my Master, let your servant depart in peace,

in Friede, in Friede fahren, as Schütz sings,

my feet, one here, one there, 

legs full-stretching out between

the hither and the farther shore

When birth is death and death is birth, 

when birth is brith, and death is liberation

here not here in this twilight time

bonding creature to unbounded creator

now and into the age of ages

Ausculta, fellow servant, and depart in peace,

into the light that has filled your darkened mind—

into the peace you have tasted this day—

a light to enlighten the Gentiles

and peace upon your people, Israel.