Mary in the world (Mary Oliver)

  To live in this world 

you must be able 

to do three things: 

to love what is mortal; 

to hold it 

                                    

against your bones knowing 

your own life depends on it; 

and, when the time comes to let it 

go, 

to let it go. 

  --Excerpt, Mary Oliver,  

Into Blackwater Woods  

 Image source:  The Fourth Station, stained glass, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley 

 Poem source 

A bridge between heaven and earth (Baumgarten)

   The ascension of Elijah may be compared to the flight of a bird, which none can follow; the ascension of Christ is, as it were, a bridge between earth and heaven, laid down for all who are drawn to Him by His earthly existence.

--Michael Baumgarten

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Quotation source

This is how you swim inward (Mary Oliver)

I’d seen 

their hoofprints in the deep 

needles and knew 

they ended the long night 

            

under the pines, walking 

like two mute 

and beautiful women toward 

the deeper woods, so I 

                                    

got up in the dark and 

went there.  They came 

slowly down the hill 

and looked at me sitting under 

  

the blue trees, shyly 

they stepped 

closer and stared 

from under their thick lashes and even 

                                    

nibbled some damp 

tassels of weeds.  This 

is not a poem about a dream, 

though it could be. 

                                    

This is a poem about the world 

that is ours, or could be. 

Finally 

one of them – I swear it! – 

                                    

would have come to my arms. 

But the other 

stamped sharp hoof in the 

pine needles like 

                                    

the tap of sanity, 

and they went off together through 

the trees.  When I woke 

I was alone, 

                                    

I was thinking: 

so this is how you swim inward, 

so this is how you flow outward, 

so this is how you pray. 

--Mary Oliver, 

Five A.M. in the Pine Woods 

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Poem source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 28, 2017: May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened...

 May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened… 

Where do you look for the love of God? 

   When, at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, two men dressed in white garments stand beside the apostles, their question is a pointed one:  Why are you standing there looking at the sky?  At the Ascension of Jesus, the apostles are called to refocus, to look inward rather than upward, for it is there that they will find Jesus living in them, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation of which Paul speaks in Ephesians.  You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, Jesus has reassured them – and that Spirit will given them a new way of seeing, a new purpose in life.  Jesus’ Ascension thus represents a significant shift in the way the apostles understand themselves, which is to say that they are now members of a community filled with the love of Christ, and gifted with the capacity to share that love with the world.

   As Christians, we too are called to refocus, that we might find the Spirit present in us as well.  When, as Paul says, the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, then we can hope to be engaged in a relationship of love with the Lord, a relationship in which we are always moving toward fullness.  Matthew’s Gospel tells us that the disciples worshiped, but they doubted. Do we come to church with absolute conviction?  In baptism, we are brought into the fullness of God – in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – and our grasp on that fullness should shift how we understand ourselves, and how we need to understand ourselves, which is as members of the Body of Christ, a community with the Paschal mystery at its core.  All that God is doing in us right now leads us to hope for perfect union; in the meantime, all that we do, all that we say, should give witness and praise to God (Psalm 47).  As we pass through the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, let us also look inward, rather than upward, opening ourselves to the Spirit – that we might live from the love that is ours in common, and share it with the world.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle