Here, where subterranean runnels of life

Bubble to the surface

Like the fumaroles of Yellowstone

And spread across the days,

we pry up the crust just a crack,

And wonder, with a tightening of the throat,

What it would be like if all laid hid were bared

And we didn't come just to see,

But expected to stay here.

February 27, 2008

by Jonathan Foster, OFM

Cf. Luke 2.23-35

An old dim-eyed Levite roams the courts of the temple

- his widow's walk ?

from whose porticos he scans and waits,

pottering about with other duties and prayers,

but always with an eye on the door.

A young couple with a baby, clearly from the country,

step in and peer guardedly about.

No one notices , well, two men do,

amused by their plain manners, attire and dusty feet.

they smile thinly to each other.

But, he notices.

Though his eyes are weak

there is still enough light to see light.

God is in the building!

They ask about the law and what they must do,

and the old Levite, quickly and nervously,

rehearses the customary routine.

Then, trembling, he takes the baby in his arms,

(he knows perhaps better than the parents)

and introduces God to His church.

With "Papa" in large black letters on the front,

An old Latino man prepares the altar for weekday Mass.

Up two steps onto the altar platform, across,

Then two steps down the other side - a sacristan's short-cut ?

carrying a small decanter of wine - cup for the blood -

And for the body a platter of round flat breads punched out by a machine,

He sets them carefully on the credence

For the boys in robes to bring to the priest at Mass.

He does this twice, wary, deliberate,

His face solemn and almost fearful.

For he is the assistant to the ancient priests of the Maya

Who lays out the knives that will slit the girls? soft throats;

The wrangler who leads the beast into the temple

And steadies it for the cutting;

the adjutant who hands the centurion his lance.

He is Abraham before he raises the knife,

tying young Isaac to the flat rock -

the arranger of the sacrifice.

Febr 5, 2008

I have an elderly friend named Mary.

Mary spent a few years of her adult life living by the Atlantic Ocean, and never got over it.
A prayerful woman, she found the sea to be her favorite place of encounter with God. When, stuck here in the Midwest, she would speak longingly of her religious experience of the sea.
I would ask her why Lake Michigan, just a few miles from her home, wouldn't do as well.
I would remind her that, after all, you can't see across either of them. She simply dismissed me: "It's not the same."

And it isn't. I grew up just a couple miles from Lake Michigan, but there was never anything haunting or mystical about it. It was just a fun place to go fishing, swimming, picnicking, and to watch beautiful sunsets. I did not expect the ocean to be anything different.
But when I did experience the ocean - in my mid-thirties - it quickly became for me the most vivid image of God.