Of Stones and Stars
At times the growing hulk even holds the warmth of sunlight
and we find soft mossy edges to curl against and rest.
Familiarity has its own comfort.
But, in a millisecond of time the reality of camel backs and
straw spines become cold stone fact.
When ‘that which does not kill you makes you stronger’ becomes
an ominous echo of inverted meaning.
The boulder speaks in granite tones too hard to ignore.
Did you not remember that even Jesus died?
Reeling at the un-sensical pouring out of vengeance and
death as Herod’s rage stains the earth yet again, I see that quiet Baby in the
soft manger hay sleeping amidst a twinkling torrent of star-eyed angels; safe in
temporis.
But we know this will not last and Mary’s heart will break
over and over again until it is so large that only Heaven itself can hold it.
The boulder rolls on bruising out a cyclical message across
the landscape of time:
Death is inevitable as night. Innocents
suffer.
The thrones of earth silence voices, we learn, but not the
sound of weeping.
Rock begats rock; flint sharpens flint like rage fuels rage.
We see no end to Sisyphus’s nightmare or to twisted truth,
hog-tied and harnessed by influence.
But that rock. That unmanageable stone sitting like death
itself, it rolls away.
Moved by liquid love dropped for Lazarus and his grieving
friends, the welcoming of strange ones to supper, the outstretched open hand to
stem suffering of another, that boulder lifted.
Weight shifted, borne aloft by physics of light: laughter
defying gravity. For what is more joyful than Love?
The boulder ceased to burden. Unfolded like a curtain until
Tolkien’s ‘far green country opened up under a swift sunrise’ and a new day
arrived for all.
It is hard to see that death itself is not the triumphant
answer to this essential tale of Light and Dark.
Look deeper, unflinchingly through pain and the
inevitability of death, rage of power, and false naming of ‘the other:’
There. A sunbeam dances on a
dandelion emerging through a cement crack.
The tree, cracked in two by the
storm, sends up a green shoot.
The rains arrive and small seeds
swell.
An elder hands me a bit of bread torn from a small loaf.
Exhaling, I’m able to mirror back this small sliver of grace
given me by sharing the cup.
We breathe together.
The stars and stones align.
