12 December 2018

A Contemplative Moment: Into the Eye of God


  Into the Eye of God
by Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB

For your prayer
     your journey into God,
    may you be given a small storm
    a little hurricane
      named after you,
     persistent enough
      to get your attention
    violent enough
       to awaken you to new depths
      strong enough
       to shake you to the roots
     majestic enough
       to remind you of your origin:


      made of the earth
      yet steeped in eternity
      frail human dust
       yet soaked with infinity.

     You begin your storm
      under the Eye of God.
      A watchful, caring eye
      gazes in your direction
   as you wrestle
        with the life force within.

In the midst of these holy winds
In the midst of this divine wrestling
    your storm journey
    like all hurricanes
       leads you into the eye,   
   Into the Eye of God
     where all is calm and quiet.

A stillness beyond imagining!
Into the Eye of God
after the storm
Into the silent, beautiful darkness
  Into the Eye of God.


I used this poem for prayer a few evenings ago. It is taken from Macrina Wiederkehr's A Tree Full of Angels, Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary. Advent seems to me a fine time to consider the presence of the Holy in the Ordinary moments and moods of reality. Sister is a monastic of St Scholastica Monastery, Fort Smith, Arkansas.