Today begins the season of Advent in the Orthodox Church. Today I allow myself to descend into longing. I remember Creation as it was meant to be. I stand in the ashes of what we have made it, and I mourn. And I imagine a world...whole and clean...redeemed and restored. I imagine myself...whole and clean...redeemed and restored.
Today I try to wrap my head around Incarnation...around the extraordinary mystery of God...cloaking Himself in ashes. It exceeds my grasp.....
Ashes of paper, ashes of a world
Wandering, when fire is done:
We argue with the drops of rain!
Even in elements we have destroyed.
Deeper than any nerve
He enters flesh and bone.
Planting His truth, He puts our substance on.
Air, earth, and rain
Rework the frame that fire has ruined.
What was dead is waiting for His Flame.
Sparks of His Spirit spend their seeds, and hide
To grow like irises, born before summertime.
These blue things bud in Israel.
The girl prays by the bare wall
Between the lamp and the chair.
(Framed with an angel in our galleries
She has a richer painted room, sometimes a crown.
Yet seven pillars of obscurity
Build her to Wisdom's house, and Ark, and Tower.
She is the Secret of another Testament
She owns their manna in her jar.)
Fifteen years old -
The flowers printed on her dress
Cease moving in the middle of her prayer
When God, Who sends the messenger,
Meets His messenger in her Heart.
Her answer, between breath and breath,
Wrings from her innocence our Sacrament!
In her white body God becomes our Bread.
~Thomas Merton
Painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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