Wondering how God is calling you? Are you curious about how your job or set of relationships is really a vocation? Do you want some awesome discussions around faith in real-life and more? Think hanging out with Catholic sisters and a fun thoughtful, faith community is cool? Then you are in the right place! Welcome! Explore and be sure to visit with us every weekday at 6 pm CT in our chat room.
A Poem to Ponder
One of my nuns sent me this poem, and I find it very thought-provoking. Would love to hear your thoughts on it.
"On the Edge" by KarenBeth1989
There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.It is an insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us to surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.And that is what we sing about.
~ “Millennium Blessing” by Stephen Levine in Breaking the Drought: Visions of Grace
* * *
Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.
Get your nun schwag! -- We've got cool nunly items including this awesome mug at 
{ 10 comments }
Wow! This is a wonderful poem. I was so struck with that first stanza, with the phrase “completion of our birth,” that I just stopped there for a while. I’ve never heard anything that so nearly expresses what I am feeling in this, my 74th year – two challenges ahead: to become what I am supposed to be (to have been?) and to prepare for my own death.
We read and hear so much (or at least I do, from my spiritual director) about the Void – but I’ve never heard it described more clearly than in that last stanza: “we are That.”
Whew! (or at least that’s what I think the “That” must be.)
The Void is something that always speaks to me (I’m not sure what that says about my spiritual life, but whatever).
In one’s 74th year it definitely takes on different tones and hues.
Expanding my thought – I think the opening stanza says that we all fear the physical death we know is inevitable. But we are not so aware of the more subtle fear we have of dying to ourselves in order to reborn as new creatures in Christ (that is the rebirth we were originally born for, after all). But we become very attached to who we think we are (our egos) – and we don’t want to lose that – because we think we will lose ourselves in that kind of dying to self.
The rest of the poem is about, I think, that instinctive shrinking from and being drawn to the real selves we are intended to become. We have to let ourselves be enveloped by the unknowable God to become the new creatures we are going to become when we live forever in union with him.
Frankly, all I want to do with this poem is to enter silence and stay there for a while, savoring the words of this poem and see what happens.
A feeling of gratitude and awe fills my heart as I sink into the words.
Thank you.
Silence and savoring!
I don’t really understand this poem! That is an issue I have with most poetry because it all seems so abstract.
Yeah, poetry often hits me that way too … I guess for me I try to just be present to it and see what it has to say … a kind of meditation. Most of the time I don’t get the whole meaning (if there really is one) but seize upon an image or two that really speak to me.
redbud, as a student of literature, let me assure you, there is really no wrong way to interpret poetry. you may not always interpret it as the author intended–and some poets consider this failure but i do not–but you can come away with your own meaning, and that’s okay. the whole point is to make you think differently.
This poem to me is the path to religious life, the discernment of not only one’s heart but mind and soul to that of one’s congregation of choice. “And there is nothing left to say but we are That.”
Really an awesome poem.
I second Marsha’s comment about the first stanza – it stopped me in my tracks. The wonderful thing about poetry is how it reaches beyond literal meaning to capture some otherwise inexpressible quality of experience, and you realize that your experience is a shared one. How heartening to see that the experiences I’m working through now are universal and that I’m on a path that is part of the whole point of being human. Thanks for this.