Night is our diocese and silence is our ministry
Poverty our charity and helplessness our tongue-tied sermon
Beyond the scope of sight or sound we dwell upon the air
Seeking the world's gain in an unthinkable experience
We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners
With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand:
Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the conqueror...
-Thomas Merton
3 comments:
i really enjoy you.
I count the dismal time by months and years
Since last I felt the green sward under foot,
And the great breath of all things summer -
Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears
As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres
Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute
Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut,
A strange wild music to the prisoner's ears,
Dilated by the distance, till the brain
Grows dim with fancies which it feels too
While ever, with a visionary pain,
Past the precluded senses, sweep and Rhine
Streams, forests, glades, and many a golden train
Of sunlit hills transfigured to Divine.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "The Prisoner"
that little phrase, "living as listeners" has captured me. i want to be a better listener, not just to other people, but to the trees and flowers and vistas. i'm sure they are speaking of God...
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