Monday, December 7, 2020 (today’s lectionary)
Memorial of Saint Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
A poem …
I’m traveling back from Austin today. Here’s a poem, which is the end-piece of my book of devotions, Finding My Way 2016. Imagine that you’re walking in a stand of bamboo trees at the farthest reaches of a Japanese garden.
A boy. Eighteen months old,
Holding his grandma’s hand
Scuffling his feet in the gravel
Does he listen for the sound?
Or the silences in between the sound?
He looks at me watching him.
His eyes are wide
What is this “ma”
That sometimes scares us,
Sometimes saves?
It is between the waters that
Moses
led his people
It is between the clouds that the
sky
blows blue and rests my eyes
It is between the sounds of my
day
that I live my life
What is Ma?
“That little
Bit between
Each note –
Silences which give the form.”
–Isaac Stern.
“The simultaneous awareness
Of form and
non-form deriving from
an intensification
of vision.”
–Wikipedia.
(Isaiah 35, Psalm 85, Luke 5)
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