Wednesday's Woe - Caught in the Paradox of Worlds Between Life and Death

Wednesday's Woe

Caught in the Paradox of Worlds 

Between 

Life and Death

One glance in the mirror:

In my eyes I see

A woman who is bearing on her shoulder

The weight of the world, its tragedy...

(How can this be?

From one who has just sipped her tea

By the side of her true love,

Watching the beauty of God's world

Stretched out before me~

From white-breasted sparrow to black-capped chicadee

To house finches all around the feeder unfurled

While cardinals perch, looking out on their world:

All God's handiwork captured

In these frailest of creatures,

Frailer even than this daughter-less mother

Who from her troubles wants to run for cover...

Can I not see God's light shone in these

Frailest of creatures...yet noblest in ways

To exemplify the Creator's noblesse oblige:

"The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil."*

Why do these visions of "grandeur" pale out

So quickly with one walk inside

Upon seeing my unknowing, but revealing pout

That unmasks this grieving mother's apparent need to hide?

Perhaps like Eliot, I could remember,

"The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art."**)

May God touch my wounds

As He once touched Christ's tomb,

Bringing life to the dead,

Yielding His light despite Death's darkest tread,

Resurrecting my heart

With "the sharp compassion of the Healer's art,"

To restore my childlike wonder

Despite the ravages of Death's lightning and thunder

That threaten daily to take me under...

Like the prodigal's father, may He run to meet me,

Overriding my pleading words

Full of the frailty of the helpless birds,

Showering me with a Father's grace

Shown by the love that lights up His face,

Melting the hardness that's crept within,

Restoring the softness of the pardoned sin,

(Despite the Serpent's ever sly coil)

Once again charging my world "with the grandeur of God,"

Flaming out Death "like the shining of shook foil."

Amidst the ravages of Death's daily devastation,

O Lord, restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation!

~~~

"Restore to me the joy of Your salvation

and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me."

~Psalm 51:12 NIV

*Gerard Manley Hopkins

**T. S. Eliot

Poem - Caught in the Paradox of Worlds Between Life and Death - Angie Bennett Prince - June 5, 2012