Keeping Grace and a blaze of Glory
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
The 40 days of Lent turn almost like an imperceptible dawn into 50 days of Easter. We emerge from a wilderness, limp through Jerusalem like that donkey bearing Jesus, and fall at the cross. Then somewhere in the middle of the darkness there is a whisper of resurrection. He is not there? And emptiness becomes suffused with holiness; invisibility becomes ultimate hope!
After these last 40 days I have taken on a practice of finding resurrection for 50days, at least! I have gazed at the most beautiful colors of dawns on the Massachusetts Bay, I have let tears water the buds of the cherry trees, and I have asked myself “what of me has been resurrected?”. While I am hopeful the answer is energy and tennis talent, I am met with something more like a truer self. I am glimpsing God pointing me toward the very grace which is what I am and a growing suspicion that is enough. I cannot be anyone else.
Which leads me to the resurfacing of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem above. Kingfishers catch fire and glow with a glory of God. Even the “stones could talk”. Each mortal thing does what it is created to do, is what it is created to be. “For that I came” and yet the answer is made illusive by our social cues and commands. I want to resurrect for that which I came.
“Christ plays in ten thousand places” doesn’t seem like enough to me. Christ plays in infinite ways resounds in my soul but nevertheless, that is quibbling with the poet’s reach and recognition of an extensive and pervasive immanence.
On this the 12th day of Easter I am contemplating what is shimmering in my soul, what has Christ touched, and what is catching fire!
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