Brother John

[Guest guest]

"The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. The soul has to

proceed rather by unknowing rather than knowing."

~ St. John of the Cross, "On the Journey of the Soul to God by Contemplation"

*

Simple stilt skin, stammered in my name,

when Brother John walked in

on legs so thin, I trembled

beneath the fragility of them…

 

like Paperwhites’ in a still shot: brightly back-lit

by pre-storm darkened skies;

 

like a white baby heron, running restless, a heart

ruin-ravaged child, running, running wild

eyed along empty armed beaches

making orphan’d heron cries;

 

His thin, ivory-mottled matchsticks, thin

like waxed thread…like canvas thread,

spindle-fed, hand-fed fire tinder,

forced through the eyes of stainless needles…

 

I cannot get the image of John out

of my neti-nitrate’d,

film noir’d, archive’d mind vault.

I feel his yellow’d

leaf hands

fluttering touchingly as he touched

tenderly, desperately, again

and again, his wooden cross

curling him in to the Friend.

Jesus hung Lovingly and fiercely proud

from around John’s triple-echo'd

gekko-skinn'd neck.

 

It cut me to the quick, the pulp core

of ripe-apple’d empathy

and poignancy

to see

just how sick

John was.

 

Lucid building blocks

of Lucknow dreaming, dithered flat…

 

This is where I’m at.

 

"...He is purging the soul, annihilating it, emptying it or consuming

in it (even as fire consumes the moldiness and the rust of metal) all

the affections and imperfect habits which it has contracted in its

whole life. Since these are deeply rooted in the substance of the

soul, it is won't to suffer great undoing and inward torment, besides

the said poverty and emptiness, natural and spiritual, so that there

may here be fulfilled that passage from Ezechiel which says: "Heap

together the bones and I will burn them in the fire; the flesh shall

be consumed and the whole composition shall be burned and the bones

destroyed."

"...This purgative and loving knowledge or Divine light whereof we

here speak acts upon the soul which it is purging and preparing for

perfect union with it in the same way as fire acts upon a log of wood

in order to transform it into itself...The suffering of the soul now

becomes more intimate, subtle and spiritual, in proportion as the

fire refines away the finer, more intimate and more spiritual

imperfections, and those which are most deeply rooted in its inmost

parts."

~ St. John of the Cross

*

 

LoveAlways,

Mazie

* ~ Salvator Dali & Spanish School Artists From the hottest toys to

tips on keeping fit this winter, you’ll find a range of helpful

holiday info here.