I am reading Merton, a gift from my dear Friend Lor, and thinking about the discussion that was on Kwakersaur about "Jesus Talk", about my own relation to Jesus/Christ as a concept, as a person, as Logos. I posted about how sometimes I feel struck dumb, afraid to claim any word for God, for this totality that I call God. There is a prayer from Merton which I read this morning that went right through me.
"Oh God, my God, why am I so mute? I long to cry out and out
to Thee, over and over, and Thou are nameless and infinite. All
our names for Thee are not Thy name, infinite Trinity. But
Thy Word is Jesus and I cry the name of Thy Son and live in
the love of His heart and believe, if He wills, that He will bring
me the answer to my only prayer: that I may renounce
everything and belong entirely to the Lord!"
It is a funny thing, easy to get tangled in, that "the busy workshops" of my heart immediately set to trying to figure out what this means in a literal sense, but instantly I'm hushed and just let go. If Jesus, if Christ is Logos, the Word that God sends to me so that I may cry out to Him, my heart is humbled and grateful. If not, I will wait. If yes, but I still don't understand exactly what this means, I will wait. I was reminded of a poem I wrote before I was Quaker, which is infinitely more full as a prayer now:
As paper, I christen You Poet
And wait for Your words
To fall and cover over me, this naked page.
To fill up the empty space, the blank that shames -
To grant at least the grace of interstice,
And give me definition.
Your consciousness will call me into being.
Your thoughts, Your words, once written in,
Will make me.
Your words will give me meaning.
I am starving for the ink of You,
The ink Your words, Your words a sacrament:
"That which signifies and Is",
Your sacrament the truth that leads to You.
I worship, and I wait.
I imagine the matter of Your composition
Anticipated creation, long expected, still unseen, unknown
To be conceived, conceived of.
What begotten words will form?
I wait for the comfort, for the force
Of Your impressions pressed upon me,
The strokes of Your pen outlining what it means to be,
What names You have for beauty,
How beautiful the words upon each other building,
Shaping the expression of my meaning.
Of The Best Stuff, but Cracked
4 comments:
I can't possibly respond to the content of the rest of your post: the poem has blown me away. It's wonderful. It's inspired. It's made my day.
- - Rich Accetta-Evans
(Brooklyn Quaker)
Thanks, Richard. I respond to the poem today as if I hadn't written it. It means completely different things to me now than when it first came to me.
Your post and poem reminded me of a dimly remembered quote from Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist: "Meaning is found in the space between."
Wonderful poetry. The idea of the eternal Word is a terribly difficult one to grasp. The Greek and Latin theologians back in the days of the Councils invented various words to explain it, and it of course (as always) resulted in bloodshed, excommunications and exile.
My take is that we simply not think about it at all. There are facts and patterns, Divinely arrayed, that are so austere and beautiful that they are beyond human comprehension (Goldbach/Euler conjecture?) Similarly the secret of the Kingdom may remain forever a mystery.
A Quaker theologian once remarked that due to the experiential nature of his faith, the most he could say is that the Lord Jesus Christ is the outward manifestation of God whereas the Logos is His inward revelation. But God knoweth what that means?!
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