The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to a Window

Because my will is simple as a window
And knows no pride of original birth,
It is my life to die, like glass, by light:
Slain in the strong rays of the bridegroom sun.

Because my love is simple as a window
And knows no shame of original dust,
I longed all night, (when I was visible) for dawn my death:
When I would marry day, my Holy Spirit:
And die by transsubstantiation into light.

For light, my lover, steals my life in secret.
I vanish into day, and leave no shadow
But the geometry of my cross,
Whose frame and structure are the strength
By which I die, but only to the earth,
And am uplifted to the sky my life. 

When I became the substance of my lover,
(Being obedient, sinless glass)
I love all things that need my lover's life,
And live to give my newborn Morning to your quiet rooms,
-Your rooms, that would be tombs,
Or vaults of night, and death, and terror,
Fill with the clarity of living Heaven,
Shine with the rays of God's Jerusalem:
O shine, bright Sions! 

Because I die by brightness and the Holy Spirit,
The sun rejoices in your jail, my kneeling Christian,
(Where even now you weep and grin
To learn, from my simplicity, the strength of faith). 

Therefore do not be troubled at the judgements of the thunder,
Stay still and pray, still stay, my other son,
And do not fear the armies and black ramparts
Of the advancing and retreating rains:
I'll let no lightning kill your room's white order. 

Although it is the day's last hour,
Look with no fear:
For the torn storm lets in, at the world's rim,
Three streaming rays as straight as Jacob's ladder:

And you shall see the sun, my Son, my Substance,
Come to convince the world of the day's end, and of the night,
Smile to the lovers of the day in smiles of blood;
For though my love, He'll be their Brother,
My light - the Lamb of their Apocalypse.

-- Thomas Merton (1915-1968), American Trappist monk and priest, memoirist, writer, and contemplative

The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin is August 15,

Transfigured

Luke 9:28-36

Sometimes, for a suspended moment,
light can be a physical presence, causing
eyelids to slam down like window-blinds, the doors
of the mind to bang shut in shock and wonder,
hands thrown up, defensively, as the flare
makes visible the bones in those same hands, hands
whose strength had been a source of pride but now
seemed as ephemeral as moth wings against such a light.

Even with our eyes closed, the figures danced
orange and black upon the green screen of eyelids.
Light so bright it deafened,
at first we reeled, contained within the thunderous roar
of an open furnace door. Lightning forked heavenward
and split. Jesus stood, and two more--
on one side the Law in Moses, forming community; on the other
Elijah’s prophetic imagination: poet and goad.
In the center the Human One, divine image perfected
yet also living, enfleshed, as when veiled, among us.

And then the humming sound of our own heartbeats.
Now we saw the seams torn asunder,
Virtues at the center of a humanity,
enlightenment embodied, laid bare
and God’s Wisdom in the center, committed,
to lay himself down for our sake.
The holy companions murmured together,
as old friends do, laughing at meeting again,
the delight in pulling back the curtain
revealing essential cosmic union.
Of course we wished to stay forever.

But the pronouncement to listen shocked us to silence,
and we staggered like sleepwalkers
from the cloud-shrouded mountain,
newly alive, boundaries of earth and sky
an illusion. Scattered images dancing
along nerves, transformed from experience to memory,
our footsteps in sync with each pulse
that beat as one with that sacred heart
and thrummed from that unpierced wrist
and beautiful, unmarred brow,
Earth electric beneath our feet, transfigured.

--LKS, written for the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for August 3, 2023.

The Feast of Michaelmas

Genesis 28:10-17
Revelation 12:7-12
Psalm 103:19-22
John 1:47-51


Who is like God? The nine choirs of angels shouted,
and Michael, leading the heavenly host,
ground the bat-winged dragon beneath his heel,
he who once bore light, Lucifer,
rocketing to earth on a lightning bolt.
In that moment
Satan, crowned with blackberry brambles,
slinks off trailing intrigue like shadows.
Sword drawn, Michael bows before the Son of Man,
ready to intercede for those in crisis--
his breastplate gleaming like noonday
against the fear that stalks in darkness,
less a messenger than a warrior,
when killing in the name of God was expected.

That’s what the old folk say.

And so, as equinox recedes,
the days grow short, the meadows
rattle with spent blossoms, but
Michaelmas daisies flare like blue stars--
little suns among the weeds.
Stubble stands in harvested fields,
carrots and Queen Anne’s lace are sorted,
the fishermen return to port one last time,
nets bursting, home until spring.
The rent’s due but the cake is sweet.
Innkeepers seethe as the tourists depart at summer’s end,
and throw statues of Michael into the sea.

The fasting Francis of Assisi rises from his knees:
forty days past Ascension,
St. Michael’s Lent gives over to feast,
and there is a moment of luxurious quiet.
Thoughtfully hiding a goose
behind the hem of his robe,
he has her to dinner, rather than for,
offers her a carrot, and smiles.



(For a collection of folk traditions regarding the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, click here and here.)

-- Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, September 29, 2022

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on September 29, 2022.

The Transfiguration

So from the ground we felt that virtue branch
Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists
As fresh and pure as water from a well,
Our hands made new to handle holy things,
The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed
Till earth and light and water entering there
Gave back to us the clear unfallen world.
We would have thrown our clothes away for lightness,
But that even they, though sour and travel stained,
Seemed, like our flesh, made of immortal substance,
And the soiled flax and wool lay light upon us
Like friendly wonders, flower and flock entwined
As in a morning field. Was it a vision?
Or did we see that day the unseeable
One glory of the everlasting world
Perpetually at work, though never seen
Since Eden locked the gate that’s everywhere
And nowhere? Was the change in us alone,
And the enormous earth still left forlorn,
An exile or a prisoner? Yet the world
We saw that day made this unreal, for all
Was in its place. The painted animals
Assembled there in gentle congregations,
Or sought apart their leafy oratories,
Or walked in peace, the wild and tame together,
As if, also for them, the day had come.
The shepherds’ hovels shone, for underneath
The soot we saw the stone clean at the heart
As on the starting-day. The refuse heaps
Were grained with that fine dust that made the world;
For he had said, ‘To the pure all things are pure.’
And when we went into the town, he with us,
The lurkers under doorways, murderers,
With rags tied round their feet for silence, came
Out of themselves to us and were with us,
And those who hide within the labyrinth
Of their own loneliness and greatness came,
And those entangled in their own devices,
The silent and the garrulous liars, all
Stepped out of their dungeons and were free.
Reality or vision, this we have seen.
If it had lasted but another moment
It might have held for ever! But the world
Rolled back into its place, and we are here,
And all that radiant kingdom lies forlorn,
As if it had never stirred; no human voice
Is heard among its meadows, but it speaks
To itself alone, alone it flowers and shines
And blossoms for itself while time runs on.
​
But he will come again, it’s said, though not
Unwanted and unsummoned; for all things,
Beasts of the field, and woods, and rocks, and seas,
And all mankind from end to end of the earth
Will call him with one voice. In our own time,
Some say, or at a time when time is ripe.
Then he will come, Christ the uncrucified,
Christ the discrucified, his death undone,
His agony unmade, his cross dismantled—
Glad to be so—and the tormented wood
Will cure its hurt and grow into a tree
In a green springing corner of young Eden,
And Judas damned take his long journey backward
From darkness into light and be a child
Beside his mother’s knee, and the betrayal
Be quite undone and never more be done.

--Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scots poet, translator, journalist, editor, critic, and writer.

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration (which is different from Transfiguration Sunday, which is the last Sunday in Epiphany. Yeah, I know.)