keeping company

1.

From Beauty and the Beast we can learn, said Chesterton, that the beloved becomes loveable after he is loved. You love the beloved and this allows them to be loveable.

We all need the integrity of being loved.

It lets us flourish.

Ο μάρανθος μαρένεται μόνος του χωρίς το χώμα.

Ο μάρανθος μαρένεται χωρίς τον ήλιο.

2.

I reach up. I reach up to heaven because it can hold me.

I lift up mine eyes, because I want to see.

I am alone in the valley, I reach up to You and I need You to BE.

You have made me poor, so very poor, so that there will be nothing between us.

You have made me despair, so fully despair in the world, so that I trust in nothing but You.

You have made me to become a deep hole;

A deep yearning;

A full surrender;

A space that is not full;

A waiting room with no guests.

You have taken everything out of my hand.

I have nothing: but a definite, palpable need to be filled by Your grace.

You have made me a hole so big that nothing else can fill it.

You have made me so desolate that nothing but Your utter joy can lift me up.

3.

I don’t know what everyone else is doing, I am out here alone.

I don’t know how they spend their time because I spend mine looking to You.

I look into a void.

I stand at an edge.

But I came out here for the peace, for to hear You speak.

I have let go of everything, because my need is too big.

My need is so large.

It is so large the world falls in it and becomes a nothing.

I need.

I need to be out here looking for You.

Either I will find You, and in Your light I will see life,

Or I will die from this vast never-ending need.

So it is worth looking don’t you think?

4.

I looked under rocks and between cars, and all the silly places I could think.

But I cannot think.

So I have come out here,

In this desert,

On the top of this hill,

And I am standing here, so that you might see me.

I have got rid of everything so that you might see me.

5.

blessed are they who mourn, but who does not mourn?

Who can ‘not mourn?’

When they have a hole so much bigger than the skies, a tear in their soul that only becomes more and more vast,

That they cannot stop.

We need. We need nothing but You.

I am expecting You.

When you come into your kingdom, remember me o Lord, when you come into your kingdom.

Do not leave me with the need.

For if You will not fill me with Your grace, then nothing is worse than the day on which I was born.

Nothing is darker than the clouds that should have covered that day and never let it be.

Nothing is longer than the distance between me and the fulfillment of my soul.

Manna

The Jews in the desert groaned against the Lord, even as the manna was still in their mouths.

Even as God nourished them in a barren land, they complained.

I am in a barren land.

I complain.

At every free moment I turn to God and I complain.

But had it not been for God’s sustenance I would be now dead.

Long dead.

I would have died already a thousand times.

And more.

I look around me and see the barren land and become faint

I loose hope, and like Peter I begin to sink.

Keep your eye on the Lord, do His work, and despair not. (even if the statistics are right)

A prayer for the morning

God, help me to know my talents, and to use them.

That I do not waste them away like the barren fig tree.

What can I do well and what am I good at? Do I do it?

Do I use what you have given me for the sake of all your people,

And to Your glory?

Or do I sit on it?

Because what you have given me is not mine to keep.

What I am is not for myself alone.

Am I a good steward? Do I use what you gave me to the benefit of your people?

Or am I wasting away, already withered, like the barren fig tree that bore no fruit?

Like the barren fig tree to which You had given life and nourishment,

But which gave nothing back?

God grant to me to give something back.

Something excellent

- that is - to express that which You have given,
like the moon reflects the light of the sun and is like a light in the darkness.

Amen.