IN HONOR OF THE HOLY THEOTOKOS "MANILANSKAYA"

THE QUIETING OF MARY WITH THE RESURRECTED ONE (R.M.Rilke)

What they felt then: is it not

Above all the mysteries the sweetest

and yet still earthly:

when he, pale from the grave,

his burdens laid down, went to her:

risen in all places.

Oh first to her. How they

inexpressively began to heal.

Yes, to heal: that simple. They felt no need

to touch each other strongly.

He placed his hand, which next

would be eternal, for scarcely

a second on her womanly shoulder.


And they began

quietly as trees in spring

in infinite simultaneity

their season

of ultimate communing.


(More honorable than the Cherubim,
and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim,
Thee who without corruption
gavest birth to God the Word,
the very THEOTOKOS;
Thee do we magnify!)

AT THE ICON STUDIO

First,
Virginia taught me
light.
She urged me,
light up.
Tarred, nicotine-lined
pleasure-sticks
the flavor
of death.

Or was it,
death as in death?
or debts
a thousand times over,
with every puff
the cough
releases
momentary cares
and monetary squabbles.

Then,
Virginia taught me light.
The spark of unknowing
Where I put up a fight;
of most everything
un-learning.

In her I discovered
That dogs came from pollen
or the other way around,
and rainbows appear
not from some sparkling pool
then end in a pot of gold.
By some humbler instructions
I learned
that all colors come from the ground.

SECRETS

We are all secrets...
We bump.
We burst into secrets.
T.Merton (May 6th, Woods, Shore, Desert)


I become human only in so far as I am able to reveal myself to the other;
as long as I am receptive of their self-revelation to me.

I am a secret waiting to unfold.

You are a secret to me.

The more that we bump,
the more that we burst,
the more that we realize
how immense and unfathomable our secrets are
to one another.

Human living is a never ending search into the unknowable.

God is the great unknown.

God is the great "secret."

We are His image and likeness.

We are secrets.

THE WORLD, MY DESERT

The desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit...EVERYWHERE IS DESERT...

T.Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, pp.18.20



THE WORLD,

MY DESERT.

EVERYWHERE I GO,

THERE I MUST FIND

MY DESERT.

EVERYWHERE

IS

DESERT.

GATES

Always I go from gate to gate,/ rained on, scorched by the sun;/ suddenly I press my right ear/ into my right hand./ And now my own voice comes to me/ as if I'd never known it.
R.M.Rilke, The Beggar's Song

It was a gate to the "new" I have stumbled into. New world, new faces, new sights and sounds, new tounge unfolding, new flavors bursting, new relationships unraveling...a new me emerging.

"A new heaven and a new earth" said our Lord in the second reading of yesterday's Eucharist. And Rilke couldn't possibly be more precise in saying: "suddenly I press my right ear into my right hand./ And now my own voice comes to me/ as if I'd never known it." I didn't only do it with my right ear and hand. I dunked my entire face into my cupped hands in humble recognition of the newness of it all.

I am the beggar now at the gates of my Father's house. But mercifully, I need not even knock. He already rushed to meet me halfway...