An invocation of peace

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9)

Prayer has no words today, but words have been my life so I must try to name what can’t be named, knowing only that I will fail and that failure at this is better than every success I have ever known.

For today I do not pray; I am prayed, a participant in a prayer that has neither beginning nor end. When it happens all one can do is to consent or refuse. And refusal is madness.

So I sit, speechless, as winter light slants through blinds in the loft, oblique rays finding faces on the tapestry that hangs on the west wall. Joseph and the magi stand there, but the golden beams pass over and leave them in shadow to illumine Mary, the child and one magi kneeling at the manger, as speechless as I.

Time stands still as the light lingers on their faces, embracing and holding them as one with the child, drawing eyes and heart into this circle of light where every longing falls silent as the air around them.

A photo across the way fills the dining room wall. Black and white, a gravel road stretches into the distance, lined by dark trees, leaves of summer leaves long gone. Disappearing into a thin morning fog, who knows where the road goes ... or ends? Perhaps a cottage where warmth and light welcome wandering souls home, where we finally see each other as we are, beloved beyond measure, though we knew it not.

And this is my life, our life, shrouded in unknowing, yet illumined by the mystery of the light that shines from this child, warming everyone who cares enough to come close and kneel there, taken in by Mary‘s wonder, enveloped in the light from that child that shines through the centuries to this day, this morning, this moment, filling the silence ... and me.

Silently, it speaks the knowledge of what cannot be known, the mystery of Loving Light that streams from eternity into time, sweeping our uncomprehending willingness into this prayer of blessed communion with the Love for which we have always longed.

And on the white mantle beside me, one word, spelled out in wooden letters, Peace.

What more is there to say?

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

Among the trees

 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4)

‘Tis a gift to see. Walking west, November nearly gone, daylight fading, a valance of luminous orange clouds frame the horizon, shouting one last “alleluia” for the gift of light.

Extraordinary. Except it isn’t. Heaven’s display is common for any with a mind to stop and look, even here in this suburban woods as radiance pales to pink, filtered among trees, the fruit of their boughs, brown and dry, rustling at my feet as I stop and listen to the silence, grateful for eyes to see and a heart that knows.

Reach for the phone to picture it? No. Let it go. Just be here. Only the heart has a lens large enough to capture this day’s final grace with gratitude for the gift of seeing more than autumn’s end.

For both gift and Giver offer themselves in this moment.

The mystery of life is here—first, that anything at all should exist and second, that I should not only exist but be allowed, privileged to see, to feel, to know my little life caught up in a mystery as grand as the universe itself. Why? How? And what are these tears that sing a song of praise for which I have no words?

Perhaps it because here, standing still here among the trees, I know: There is Love within all this wonder and in the wonder of every love I have ever known.

And this Love wants me. Yes, wants me. And wants me to know what I know here, among the trees.

David L. Miller