Poem: A Conversation with Mary *and SLOW Word video*

(Deep at the bottom of this quote is the SLOW Word Lectio. Subscribe on right to receive weekly lectios from the lectionary.)

I feel more at home in the roomy world of poetry. I can be bare and human. I penned this poem last March in the silence of my first spiritual direction residency when the words were bubbling up faster than I could catch them. That evening I found a friend in Mary who while bearing the gift of God-with-us, understood all too well that our waiting and even our painful laments enlarge us.

Eugene Peterson translates Romans 8:22-25 this way and it’s been preaching to me from books and mentors:

^22-25 All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

 

Praying with the Icon of the Sign: Emmanuel

 

She stands in orans, hands raised,

worshiping the one contained

in the round universe of her body.

She’s a pomegranate cut in half

revealing God as infant,

right hand raised in blessing.

She looks toward me placid

but inside a holy storm is brewing.

 

I wonder if His head

forced your womb high

against your lungs

making you gasp for air

as mine did me?

 

I wonder if He stretched your skin,

a hundred silver birch branches

grasping at the full moon

as mine did me?

 

And through each ascendant joy,

each searing grief,

the stretching magnified

expanding your heart for collected treasure.

What answer do you carry for me

an ordinary Christ-bearer,

who says a thousand quotidian yeses:

Will this stretching pain ever stop?

 

Perhaps it is the price

of this resplendent nearness.

 

I search for an answer

in her almond shaped eyes.

 

She looks at me

but only has eyes for Him.

 

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