Contemplation

thirty years ago

Contemplation

Sitting here with You
for You
emptying,
watching gratefully as the flurry subsides,
tasting for brief golden moments
the purity of heart you promised would bring blessings,
and in this moment, richly blessed.

But first, a cleansing,
waters flowing through soul spirit and mind,
a second Baptism
rinsing, dislodging sediment and sin-crust
washing, airing out, clearing what cleaved to no avail
Enticements lose their entice-energy
Attractions their distracting
Affections no longer effective,
Beguiling issues not now able to twist and turn the mind and vex the soul.
Even blood pressure slows down
since pressure is rendered powerless
in the presence of the Power that brings freedom with the blood.

I am still, at peace, singing sweet music 
at play like a child reborn looks with wide pure eyes
at a new world that can only be entered as a child
a realm that you had prepared for me
while I was going about busy, so grown up,
so
out of touch.

You bid me enter through a door of grace
appearing quietly before me. Or was it there all along?
I’d not known it, nor sense its presence
rushing about so senseless.
But now, peace. The paradise of the spirit.
How could I ever embrace to myself withered fruit
of the land of those who brought the enemy’s incessant lies.
such miseries, such inanities, such sting evil trinkets that glittered
with gold not tested.
Fool’s gold it was. Senseless indeed!
One has to have lost all sense to be so seized and destroyed by the seizing.

So I wonder:
how long before a contemplative betrays his self in the hurry-flurry of productive pride
before he really does lose himself
and forfeit the treasures You ordained he’d inherit?

But here I am safe,
rest, open, unmasked,
and by this unveiling at last free, at peace,
in quiet trusting surrender
no longer resisting no long running
simply at ease, allowing You to reach through the mystery
and part the veil and remove barbs and buried biting burrs,
soothing with oil,
bending mending restoring
whispering in my ear the promise of future invitations,
as I weepingly beg You to help me heed them when again
with gentle cords and plaintive heavenly siren-song
you bid me return to this sweetest part of life.

BG