St John of the Cross
Behold, hold and grasp passionately waiting in faith, beatific purging patience,
Let it be done, inspiration a mighty Mother, watching, taking noticing, alone with her kindness, imploring preparation,
Show me the way, contemplative divine, illuminate the mindset of negation, precipitation,
Following the fundamental non-wandering of normalcy displaced within the extraordinary, a humbling complete,
Teach me to be straight, teach be to be normal, teach me to draw unreservedly no attention upon myself, mediocrity contained, simplicity remain,
Know not the difference of hierarchy, aspiration repudiate, negate, in obedience to everything, servitude, all things immense in majesty and tribute,
Unification, nothing is a part, while still I am praying apart, dumbing down in order to avoid the devastation of spiritual pride, seven paths to stagnation, minimalism return hidden,
Secret amongst secrets, surreptitiously smile upon the darkness of clarification, eradicate progress in order to process enlightenment,
Strike harshly, stealthily smash conceptions, whisper the story of individual formation, a tale of ear-piercing woe, identity usurped,
Unification, called into the being of Three in One, salvation sharing in fertility, first a cold burning, a life after cleansing, love everlasting,
In the meantime walking wide eyed and awake, boredom embraced, idleness a gift, nothing to do, nothing to demand, nothing to declare, nothing to be, happily,
Redeemable time, wasting gracefully moments, easy does it, beyond meditation, needing no names, needing no concepts, loving refrain,
It is enough to weep amidst a smiling heart, to pour forth sorrow beneath the exhilarating scream of joy, to know no bounds while staying with inbounds, to be utterly free while under absolute obedience,
Oh Three in One, my lawlessness incomplete, wounding, allowed, constrained, protecting, guiding a guarding affectionate Heavenly Mother, one to assist a guardian angel,
Mother my inspiration, you never let me wander too far away, omnipresent, ubiquitous, how severely I must have broken your heart, you remained, adoring, showering grace,
Anchoring, showing yourself, touching deeply, finishing, completing, Mother, presenting, you made it impossible to part, amalgamated, God speed forward, together we advance.
Prayer 5
Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart
And now, I, earthbound
and preoccupied with the cares of everyday existence,
numbed by the deceitful wine of foolishness,
I, who lie in all things and am truthful in none,
marked with these faults,
how shall I come before your judgment, Just Judge,
terrible beyond words and telling, mighty God of all?
The more I compare my sinful ingratitude with your loving-kindness,
the more I prove that your law is always stronger,
and my lawlessness, always defeated.
You made me in your glorious image,
favoring a weak being like me
with your sublime likeness,
adorning me with speech,
and burnishing me with your breath,
enriching me with thought,
cultivating me with wisdom,
establishing me with ingenuity,
setting me apart from the animals,
endowing my character with a thinking soul,
embellishing me with a sovereign individuality,
giving birth as a father, nurturing as a nurse,
caring for me as a guardian,
You sowed a wayward being in your courtyard,
irrigated me with the water of life,
cleansed me with the dew of the baptismal fount,
nourished me with heavenly bread,
quenched my thirst with your blood,
acquainted me with the impalpable and unreachable,
emboldened my earthly eyes to seek you,
embraced me in your glorious light,
permitted my unclean earthly hands to make offerings to you,
honored my base, mortal ashes,
like a flicker of light,
imprinted upon a worthless wretch like me your father’s image,
awesome and blessed,
out of your love for mankind.
You did not scald my mouth for daring to call myself your co-heir,
did not reprimand me for arrogantly associating with you,
did not darken the sight of my eyes for gazing upon you,
did not exile me in shackles with those condemned to death,
did not break the wrist of my arm for improperly reaching to you,
did not crack the digits of my fingers for touching the word of life,
did not engulf me with fog for dedicating this to you, fearsome Lord,
did not crush the rows of my teeth for chewing your communion, infinite Lord,
did not turn in anger as I did with you, as with the stubborn house of Israel,
did not dishonor me at your wedding party,
I, who am unworthy of singing and dancing,
did not scold me for my disheveled clothes, I, who am disorderly,
did not cast me into the dark, my hands and feet shackled.
And I exchanged all these portions of
goodness, patience and forgiveness from you,
O beneficent, blessed and always-tolerant God,
for all manner of waywardness of the flesh and the ego,
for the wavering passions of the mind and the diversions of worldliness.
Yes, that is how, my God and Lord, I repaid you for your abundant goodness.
Thus did I offer you evil in the manner of Moses’ ingratitude.
Abandoning wisdom and pursuing foolishness,
thus did I foully dissipate the bounty of your favor with the ways of vanity,
thus in a storm of mindlessness did I lose the beacon of your ineffable grace glowing with your care,
God most high.
And although on many occasions you attempted
to draw me to you by reaching out your helping hand,
I rejected it, as the prophet accused Israel.
And although I promised and made a covenant to please you,
I did not keep it, but again perverted it into something evil.
Reverting to my old ways,
I sowed the field of my heart with thorns of sin for a harvest of dissension.
The words of the God-fearing holy prophet apply to me,
for you expected grapes but instead I sprouted thorns.
I became an unappetizing fruit of bitterness,
outcast from the garden.
Swaying violently in unsteady winds,
always blowing to and fro, I wavered.
Like the voice of blessed Job, I followed my path of no return.
I built my house upon the sands in foolishness.
Misled by the broad gate, I missed the narrow gate to life.
I closed myself off from the pilgrimage of exodus.
I spitefully uncovered the abyss of destruction.
I blocked my hearing against your teaching of life.
I covered the eyes of my soul against the cure of life.
I did not recoil from the wasting of the mind from torpor,
in spite of your trumpet of wrath.
I was not sobered by the reports of the fiery trial,
on the day of judgment.
I did not awaken from the slumber of mortal sleep.
I did not give comfort to your Holy Spirit in my bodily tabernacle.
I did not inhale the allotment of grace you granted me.
With my own hand I wreaked havoc, in the words of the proverb teller,
killing my living soul.
And what is the use of composing these meager and paltry verses
in my state of remorse which passes all measure and evades all cure?
Now it is up to you to offer life to my dead soul
and without vengeance to visit me, a condemned prisoner,
O Son of the Living God, to you be all glory.
Amen.
The Pope on Feb. 21 confirmed St. Gregory of Narek as the Church’s newest doctor. St Gregory of Narek is known for his various poetic writings, especially a book of prayers entitled “Book of Lamentations.”
“This saint is very revered in the Armenian Church. It is not uncommon to find his book in every Armenian household throughout the Middle East…”
At times immense viewing, I feel my father breathing through my eyes,
Discontent, malcontent. A washed in the misery of a moment. Creation surrounding.
A sunrise upon a snowy morning, brushed pruinose trees, squirrels anxious to feed,
Beauty transfixed. All is good. Moral theology. The Creator and creatures.
Locked within amentia, descending, replicating back, my father’s father’s father’s….unsatisfied. Demented, sadness, loving, profoundly feeling individuality.
Are you satisfied screaming unsatisfied demands, insisting upon insisting, frustrated, perplexed, muscles sore from aching, trying so awfully hard at everything,
Tumbling weed, inexorably breathe, desiring conceive, the foundational underpinnings, impossible dreams,
Anchors away, batten down the hatches, notch by notch, minute by minute, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
The wind blowing through the branches, flittering, fluttering, song birds singing, a rabbit nesting, the sound of a soft splash unseen, distant waters reflecting,
Lacking love, achromic, black and white fading into a devastating grey, emotionally longing lustfully, wanting nothing more for nothing more calls in upon itself, the quietest moments preoccupations bore, wanting to give it all away for lasting peace,
An exchange, a word, the word, loganamnosis, unheard, momentary reverberations, knowing the possessed, the gifts received at birth, the Creator perceived.
Nothing understood, action remains unrequiting. An unprofitable servant, serving one’s self, ungratefulness.
Guilt, shame, repressed, unequivocally slothful in repose, unable to accomplish generational insufficiencies, momentary, flashes of truth, flashes of pain,
A dove alighting, a crow never returning, a black stallion, a white mare, a charioteer, a romance, the Divine courting, unconditionally calling,
‘Lord, are you near?’
‘I AM, my dear.’
‘Do you really love me?’
‘Do you love the squirrels? Ten fold and a thousand times more.’
Eternal laughter, tears, a knowing, aware…
III
Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
Wtih slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plentitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Dessication of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movememnt; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.
Mortification and prayer,
Reposed, hand in hand,
Building beyond,
Foundational virtue,
Within faith,
Through hope,
In love,
Permeated by Divine Presence,
Effort, aided by grace,
Darkness ensues,
Joyful sadness infused,
Life gets none the better.
Hidden within God.
To hide from God.
A vast difference.
Life or death.
Either or,
God calls,
Bellowing loudly love.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Chr
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