Reflection for August 26, 2009

Love after Love

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart.

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life. Derek Walcott, 1930

Reflection for August 19, 2009

The Virgin of Chartres

Chartre Cathedral was built for Mary in the spirit of simple, practical, utilitarian faith and in the singleness of thought with which a little girl sets up a dollhouse for a favorite doll.

The palaces of earthly Queens were hovels compared with these palaces of the Queen of Heaven built at Chartres, Paris, Laon, Noyon, Reims, Amiens, Rouen, Bayeux . . .

The share of capital invested in the Virgin, cannot be fixed . . . but in a spiritual and artistic sense, it was almost the whole; and expressed an intensity of conviction never again reached by any passion, whether of religion, of royalty, of patriotism, or of wealth; perhaps never even paralleled by any single economic effort, except in war.

Had the Church controlled her, the Virgin would perhaps have remained prostrate at the foot of the Cross. . . . but backed by popular insistence and impelled by overpowering self interest, the Church accepted the Virgin throned and crowned, seated by Christ, the Judge, throned and crowned; and even this did not wholly satisfy the French of the Thirteenth century who seemed bent on absorbing Christ in his Mother, and making the Mother the Church and Christ the Symbol. . . .

--extracted from Henry Adams, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, 1904

Reflection for August 12, 2009

River of Jordan, Lyrics by Peter Yarrow

I traveled the banks of the River of Jordan

To find where it flows to the sea.

I looked in the eyes of the cold and the hungry

And I saw I was looking at me.

I wanted to know if life had a purpose

And what it all means in the end.

In the silence I listened to voices inside me

And they told me again and again.

(chorus)

There is only one river. There is only one sea.

And it flows through you, and it flows through me.

There is only one people. We are one and the same.

We are all one spirit. We are all one name.

We are the father, mother, daughter and son.

From the dawn of creation, we are one.

We are one.

Every blade of grass on the mountain

Every drop in the sea

Every cry of a newborn baby

Every prayer to be free

Every hope of the end of a rainbow

Every song ever sung

Is a part of the family of woman and man

And that means everyone. (repeat chorus out loud)

Reflection for August 5, 2009

An Angel Named Thelma

She hangs on my wall: a heat painted bronze angel, hands clasped in prayer as she hovers over a crescent moon. The day I moved here I placed her over the doorway to the family room, the action, my unspoken house blessing. She watches the threshold.

When I found her in Atlanta and brought her to my home there, I showed her to some friends who’d stopped in. “She needs a name,” I said. “Thelma!” Sandra immediately offered, then instantly regretted it. “No,” I said. “That’s perfect!” Thelma. I thought of the Thelmas I had known (both of them). Thelmas were solid, immovable, stalwart, and a little wild. They could tell stories to raise the hair on the back of your neck. They weren’t afraid of aging; the years rooted them, widened their vision as well as their girth. They could spit.

An angel named Thelma is not your average angel. She most definitely is not among the current rage of angels depicted as ephemeral, fragile, benign beings who look like they wouldn’t hurt a flea. She hangs out with the sorts of angels we find in the Bible. Hardly benign, these angels were messengers of harsh news and bearers of surprising invitations. They might come with comfort, but they always came with a cost.

An angel named Thelma is what I need in this season: an uppity angel at my shoulder. Someone who can breathe fire. Who will remind me that being nice won’t sustain me through the labor. Who will cry out with me in birth pangs. Who will dispatch the dragon who waits to devour what is struggling to be born.

Reprinted by permission of United Church Press from Night Visions. Copyright 1998

by Jan L. Richardson.