Reflection for November

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When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence.
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.
Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And, when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.

“For Grief” by John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (Doubleday, 2008)

Quiet lives and steady lights

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It’s been quite a while since I offered a piece by modern poet Malcolm Guite. An academic and an Anglican priest, he is particularly interested in the relationship between religion and the arts. He often uses traditional forms such as the sonnet to frame his modern take on traditional subjects, such as the Christian calendar.

Here he writes for the feast of All Saints, though we can say that it touches the next day too, All Souls. It helps to read these pieces slowly and maybe a few times. Stay with a phrase that catches your attention, such as “quiet lives and steady lights undimmed”, “the ones we shunned and shamed” or “the gathered glories of His wounded love”.

Though Satan breaks our dark glass into shards Each shard still shines with Christ’s reflected light, It glances from the eyes, kindles the words
Of all his unknown saints. The dark is bright

With quiet lives and steady lights undimmed,
The witness of the ones we shunned and shamed. Plain in our sight and far beyond our seeing
He weaves them with us in the web of being.

They stand beside us even as we grieve,
The lone and left behind whom no one claimed, Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above
The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,
To triumph where all saints are known and named; The gathered glories of His wounded love.

From “Sounding the Seasons” Canterbury Press

Fr Matthew