St. Francis of the Elements: A Meditation

St. Francis of the Elements: 

A Meditation.

Brother Air:

Francis,
you were a feather born upon the breath of God; dancing with the unseen and manifesting the invisible in your skyborn steps, inviting all to see again the Divine dance into which they are blessed born...
Francis,
you were an Autumnal leaf gilded by grace's sunshine and shower; now unafraid to let go of anything that would keep you from the freedom of flight and happy to journey to the dissolution of all in offering...
Francis,
you were a snowflake; unique and Heaven sent, you kissed the earth lightly and woke us to her own beauty and wisdom, long lost in our lies...
Francis,
you were a lightening strike; shattering a clear sky and bringing the Divine storm that renews and creates, bringing beginning and drawing a new Spring from stuffy stalled hearts...

Brother Fire:

Francis,
you were a spark; struck by Grace from the Flint of heart's hardness, yearning for the dry straw of sin to be kindled in kindness consuming...
Francis,
you were a hearth on a Winter's night; leeching the indifference from our cold ecclesial bones, welcoming all to sit in storied circle and be one in warmth...
Francis,
you were a forest fire; consuming all in the conflagration of your consecrated love, incandescent within the light of Grace flaming through your burning bones...

Sister Water:

Francis,
you were the dew of dawn; appearing to announce a new morning of magic when beasts and birds become brothers and sisters and our tongues are loosed at last in Eden's song...
Francis,
you were a sweet spring; burbling with joy that knows no end, offering to all a deep draught of the Divine, the only answer to soul's thirst...
Francis,
you were a mountain stream; singing your silver song upon a pilgrim path, refreshing worn feet and charming the divine dance from stony hearts...
Francis,
you were an ocean's drop; borne upon the tide of love you yielded to the pull of prayer and lost yourself in the sacred sea of His resurrection gaze and became yourself in unbecoming all you were not...

Sister Mother Earth:

Francis,
you were a grain of dust upon the road; herald and holy, you dwelt in truth's humility, barefoot upon the brown earth, fading at distance into the truth of her embrace...
Francis,
you were a stone; becoming stillness you yielded yourself and were chisel formed into a foundation, while still a friar free to rest upon the rock of faith...
Francis,
you were a healing herb; condensing in yourself the medicine of first divine in-breathing when all that is, is named as good, for reminding us of redemption's remedy you gave root and leaf and flower and fruit for all...
Francis,
you were bird and beast; all found their friend in you and revealed their inner teaching of praise at your prayer; wondering to hear in you the voice long lost from creature's canticle sung by all that is, as you drew even tears from those who by Adam's naming had felt their brother-sisterhood of being lost to them until your call...

Francis,
you are beyond all elemental being now, plunged sainted and seraphic into Love's fire of origin and union and ending, all in one eternal communion of praise, where God is all in all and all are one. Pouring out upon those who are brave enough to follow your bloody footprints upon the Gospeled path an ever flowing fountain of peace and joy and brother beckoning us ever onward, ever upward, from earth's embrace, to sing with wind and fire and water our way into the Divine Dance of Being!

O Radix Jesse! A meditation on the third of the Great O Antiphons of Advent:

O Radix Jesse, O Root of Jesse!

We cry out to you O Root from which all springs,

first fecundity of the Divine!

Come and restore our fruitfulness so long shrivelled and sin wintered!

For we, obsessed only

with the flower that blooms

and is gone so quickly,

spill our tears upon the soiled surface

of the fading petal

and forget the virtue of the root!

O Root of Jesse!

Help us lest we forget that strong growth,

must come from a strong stock,

to know a flower that would

outlast the frost

must come from deep roots,

long buried,

and anchored in

the warm womb

of Mother Earth

resting down the long

ages in the divine dark!

O Root of Jesse!

Speak to us of Spring!

Of that new life you bring,

a quickening felt through all creation,

a gospeled spark,

begun in the deep pulse of a seed

now planted

in that gateless garden

so long prepared!

O Root of Jesse!

You are the point of origin

where all begins,

where from eternity time blooms;

where then comes forth from

Now;

until that sprouting moment

where all begins in you anew!

Save us for your harvest of hope!

O Root of Jesse!

Mixing your luminous seed

with the deep humus

of our muddied being

you bring forth new life!

Heal us

and raise us from our barren sleep

of sin and self

inviting us to bloom again

as first intended and

yet more so than even this

for now,

our roots entwined,

grafted to your Divine stock,

made at last again

one people, one plant, one garden

in which you will walk, delight and dwell.

O Root of Jesse!

We call to you in our evening song

as Adam did,

our gardener father who knew the names of all

and saw your face reflected in his own

until our bloom withered in his hand

plucked from its sustaining root

by selfish desire.

O Root of Jesse!

We sing you our Magnificat,

first sung by Eve our earth Mother,

long silenced since the sundering of her stock,

until she who is Eve and Jesse’s daughter too

became the place of planting

where you

divine root, and seed, and stock,

now born in time and lulled by her hymn

to sleep before your sorrows

renew in us your

love so radical that we are again

delivered into Eden, rooted in

peace,

God grafted into grace.

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;

before you kings will shut their mouths,

to you the nations will make their prayer:

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

O Wisdom! A meditation on the first of the Great O Antiphons of Advent

 

 

 

O Wisdom!

This night the Church turns toward the second half of its Advent journey as with eight great cries from the aching heart of humanity we express the ancient longing for wholeness,

for liberation,

for union with the divine,

for grace…

From the long cold of our Edenic exile we turn towards the sky and kindle hope looking into the dark for a light beyond all night and we sing the ancient invocations of Presence and power:

The O Antiphons,

the deep magic from before the dawn of time…

So at sundown each evening from now until Christmas Eve we will call on the One who comes…

who descends that we may ascend…

who goes forth from the Father that we may return with Him to the houses of light… We will call on Him by names so ancient they are written in words of fire in the hidden heart of Creation their lightening letters breathed forth from the Divine as transcendent touches that set souls longing and hearts bursting as their litany of longing is intoned

O Sapientia! O Wisdom!

We cry out from the heart of our foolishness, from the loss of our shallow knowing, from our listing and lying about the truth and the wound at the heart of all things…

O make us wise…

Enlighten our darkness…

Long sought and hidden,

yearned for by sages and saints,

desired by philosophers and poets

down the ages Wisdom comes…

so often lost…

so often found…

so needed today.

Pouring forth its divine energies

as Hochma,

as Hagia Sophia,

as God at play,

as a young girl in the full exultation of wonder,

as a woman birthing beauty and blessing,

as an elder sage where being and experience are fused at last into

Wisdom…

For Wisdom

is revealed in the heart,

and in the womb,

in the mother

and in the child,

for in no other way could

so close a union,

an inter-weaving,

an inter-being,

an incarnation

be revealed.

For the One who comes

is already

and always

here.

Hidden yet always present…

Heard thundering from the cloud,

from the mountaintop,

in the burning of the bush,

on the edge of the breeze

in the quiet rhythm of the breath,

and in the rippled

waters

of the womb.

And so, as the tide of sunset washes this world

in the dark ocean of night,

we breathe and stand for the Maiden Mother’s song

And chant our first invocation…

To the Word,

to Wisdom,

to the One who is…

to th One who comes...

“O Wisdom

Who proceedeth from the mouth of the Most High,

Who fills the Universe and holds all things together in a strong yet gentle manner,

O come to teach us the way of truth!”

At the centre, the Heart.

What do we find at the centre of our faith?
The Cross, uniting earth and Heaven in a communion of Love stronger than death, despair or evil.
What do we find at the centre of that Cross?
A human heart that holds the fullness of Divinity.
What do we find at the centre of this heart?
A burning wound of fire and light wherein our woundedness is healed, our darkness illumined, our sin forgiven, and our existence united with Divine Nature forever.
What do we find at the centre of that wound?
The point where time and eternity meet in that mystery of Divine Love we call Incarnation, we call Jesus.
What do we find at the centre of the Incarnation?
The answer to all the questions of our being:
We have come from Love.
We are now because of Love.
We are called into Love for eternity.
And we are loved so much that God would break His own heart for eternity to prove to us just how much we are loved.
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
I place all my trust in thee.