Why do we do all the things that we do?
Why do we fear to die?
Free to be elsewhere,
Love holds us here,
Fear of the dark encircling.
Why do we do all the things that we do?
Why do we die?
Why do we sin when the Sun is in sight?
Why do we lie under the Moon?
The answer is in the rising of the tide
And the shift of the seasons
As much as in the beats
Of a human heart.
Worlds upon worlds whirl round us,
While we toil in division down below,
So forgetful of where our shared soil flares from.
Sleep seats the soul in eternal bliss:
We breathe ourselves into
A rhythm old as time;
It turns the mind off,
Empties it of self,
So that God may enter.
Mind wakes the soul to the light of day,
Where letters and spells
And all the markings of human hands and mouths abound,
But it neglects the light in the soul behind itself,
The secret source it is ashamed of,
For it seeks to possess it as its own.
Spinning round about
With stars overhead,
Day after day,
Night after night,
Dazzled by nature’s beauty,
And the swiftness of her scythe,
We grow dizzy,
We lose our heads.
We forget what
in sleep remembers us.
Into our bodies we fall
for the hunger in our belly,
and the lust in our groin,
until our bones our ground to dust
on their date of due return to dirt.
But Earth is no prison cell,
For out of cells we are grown.
Sunlight, too, falls to Earth
But does not petrify.
Its warmth a gift and not a warning.
Even rocks receive it willingly.
Earth is the secret source of the Sun and the Moon,
Of all the stars and galaxies,
and plants and animals
Who coinhabit our planetary humanity.
Every soul in this world
is bound as one in
That which Thou Art.
Earth has become the home of the Christ.
It is no tomb, but Life.
Earthbound, we learn to walk.
Attuned to Logos, we talk.
We understand one another,
We converse together with the universe.
Together, each one becomes All,
We join in celestial chorus
In praise of an immanently transcendent divine,
An aesthetic and moral revelation
Of a once impossibly hidden,
Yet now utterly naked,
And undeniably present fact.
Christ is not a supernatural power
Ruling from heaven.
Christ is present as the love in our hearts
And the action it inspires,
Or Christ is not present.
Singing the song of the Lord,
Our mortal mouths shape truth,
And in that resonance we may join
In celebration of creation.
The way and the truth and the light
Are not opposed to the dark and stupid.
Sleep and death are not apart from life;
Intelligence is a learning process
Not an eternal stock of knowledge.
For on this terrific turning Earth
Each day and night completes
Another wobbly circle of time,
Albeit imperfect,
Inscribing itself in the sphere of eternity.
And eternity is so in love with the productions of time.
Without the imperfections of time,
Eternity would know nothing of death,
And so nothing of
How Love overcomes it.
Holy we are
Whole:
awake in dream and sleep,
always held,
always borne.
The hand of the Lord,
and the heart of the Lord,
and the head of the Lord
are your hands and my hands,
your heart, my heart,
our heads put together.
The Lord does not restrain us
but is our soul's release into wonder,
our love of neighbor,
of robin and redwood,
our worship of water’s flow from stream to sea,
tracking a mystery wider than the sky.
The Oort Cloud cannot contain us,
The angels are raining their tears upon us;
May we host their grace with honor,
Collecting their sacrifice in the vessels they have forged for us,
But that only we can ignite.
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