Friday, March 23, 2012

Lauching the Ship

Welcome, all of you now reading, to my new blog, which I do not expect to stay new for very long.  For some time I have been building up to this move, yearning as any writer usually does, for a bigger audience than local media of communication make possible.  My background is largely in movie criticism and in commentary about classical music and drama as well as poetry.  Several individuals who have been recipients of my words when beamed over my local church’s e-mail network have indicated that they value what I say and anticipate my latest review or appraisal.  It is my hope that I can widen that readership and by so doing spur on my creative juices that might otherwise tend to grow fallow.  Certainly I am hoping for greater feedback, which can incite me to writings that I might only dream of creating.  The bigger the audience the greater the challenge!

One thing that will not appear on this blog is political commentary.  I will not be expressing views on Presidential candidates or making predictions about the outcome of elections or discussing trends among the voting public.  I will not hesitate to come to terms with a controversial movie or topics explored and depicted on the screen.  But do not count on me to make pronouncements about the world scene as such.

My writings will be conditioned by my Christian faith and my intense devotion to the search for truth.  As a sampler of the kind of substance I intend to share, I offer the following poem, one of my most recent works.

Infinity Beyond the Blink of an Eye


“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.”
                                      Psalm 139: 17-18a

Only at great peril do we attempt to enter the mind of God. 
There in that hinterland we are soon lost. 
The road signs are not readable, not even for an intrepid mystic. 
Let it please the devout heart that this is so!  Surely the Psalmist, disinclined to watch from within the Creator’s mind, if only
he could, deems everything visible to the naked human eye
a divine thought in painterly language. 

Every tree, rock, drop of water, chunk of earth, every mountain peak or cavern, each declivity, the very sun that warms our earth,
each blade of grass, every gust of wind in the willows,
the aromatic vapor of the morning, each and every species of creature! 
What we see of them standing on our tiptoes is enough, is it not!

But if the divine mind is anything akin to the human,
we must suppose that God’s is also cudgeled by secret fears –
hidden of necessity from us mortals supremely inflicted with
lesser ones of our own. 
The lacerating edge of many a deadly nightfall, of many
a war or devastation.

Entering this formidable domain we would shoulder the universe itself, caught in fierce meteor showers, seething asteroids and
black holes, as well as all the pains and sufferings of
the multitudes beyond our ken, all the human wreckage,
refuse and irreversible transgression.

And even if we could, for as much as a fleeting moment, glimpse
the unspeakable orbit of infinite love that overreaches all that,
how would we hold onto it?  It might even be blinding to our eyes.
Let us rather with thankful hearts and minds cling
to the passion of the Psalmist, who saw the divine wonders
but only through the eyes of the flesh.
It is after all a heart of flesh this God has given us so lovingly.

2 comments:

  1. I loved the phrase you used to describe God's love "unspeakable orbit of infinite love that overreaches all"

    I am sure that phrase will flow into my mind and heart often. I have another phrase to offer you that I don't remember who place it in my mind and heart. "You have touched me! I have grown!" Thank you.
    Normale

    ReplyDelete
  2. How poignant that God's creations can cause God to fear.

    ReplyDelete