Category: Poetry


Crossings #57 – Love’s meaning

Filed Under: Crossings, Epiphany, Julian of Norwish, Love, Musings, Poetry by wfloyd — 1 Comment
January 14, 2007

LOVE was our Lord’s meaning. (Julian of Norwich, Showings)

The greatest Epiphany about God and ourselves that we remember during this season is the revealing of the person of  Jesus as the embodiment of God’s essential nature – love. As the 14th century English mystic Julian of Norwich summarized the Good News: “Love was our Lord’s meaning.”

For in Jesus Christ we see to the heart of who we are – and to the heart of God. And what do we see? Nothing less than radical, risk-taking, inclusive Love that empowers all we do for justice.

Jesus taught his followers, saying: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:34-35).

Thomas Traherne, the 18th century English spiritual writer, said it well:

Let me love every Person as Jesus Christ:
Meet his love, and thine, O Lord, In every person . . .
O Learn me this, and the whole is learned.
Learn me this, the Divine Art, And the Life of God!

The Good News is that in the person of Jesus Christ, God re-words the world. Where the governing word is hatred — a new word, love. Where the dominant word is power — love. Where the tempting word is greed — love. This love is not just a fuzzy emotion. Love is the urge towards authentic relationships, communities of hospitality and justice. To be the church is to be formed in love. To act out that love. Whatever it takes. No matter what.

I’m not much of a romantic when it comes to the church. We can be among the most petty, prideful, pretentious, pompous communities imaginable. Seldom do we act like the Body of Christ, Love Incarnate in Community.

But sometimes, precisely there when we least expect it, true love breaks through – the love of God that we can find only in loving encounters with one another – especially those least like ourselves.

God, I believe, has a sense of humor richer than ours, a heart full of tender mercies deeper than we can even desire. For, after all, “Love was our Lord’s meaning.” And the world will know that we, the church, are disciples of that Love, as we love one another. It would be an Epiphany!

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W. S. Merwin, “Listen”

Filed Under: Musings, Poetry by wfloyd — Leave a comment
May 23, 2006

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals
back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chose we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

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