Showing posts with label Denise Levertov. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Denise Levertov. Show all posts

Sunday, April 24, 2022

1st After Easter, Vast Unfolding Design

 1st Sunday after Easter

John 20:19-29 

On the evening of the first day after

Coptic

the Sabbath, the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the authorities. Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you!”And while he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

Full of joy, the disciples recognized the Lord. And again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” And when he said this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit through which the world will receive healing. From now on, you shall work in human destinies with spiritual power so that they shall have the strength to wrest themselves free from the load of sin, and at the same time to bear the consequences of their offenses.”

Morgan Psalter
Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not there with them when Jesus came. Later the disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he replied, “If I do not see in his hand the marks of the nails, and do not put my finger in the place where the nails were, and place my hand in his side, I cannot believe it.” 


Eight days later, the disciples were again gathered in the inner room, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Stretch out your finger and see my hands, and stretch out your hand and put it into my side. Be not rigid in your heart, but rather feel and trust in my power in your heart.”
 

Then Thomas said to him, “You are the Lord of my soul; you are the God whom I serve.” And Jesus said to him, “Have you found my power in yourself because you have seen me? Blessed are those who find my power in their hearts, even when their eye does not yet see me.” 

1st After Easter

April 24, 2022

John 20:19-29 

A child of two or three is absorbed with learning about the sense world, exploring and naming things. But around four, there comes a moment when the child will close its eyes and say, ‘I can see pictures’. An inner eye opens, and the faculty of picture-making, of imagination, day-dreaming, and ultimately of memory is born. Some children can then also image real beings that cannot be seen with outer eyes. 

Tissot

The disciples of Christ spent three years with Him, getting to know him in the sense world. They learned to name Him. After the great panorama of His tragic death, He was lost to their ordinary sight. But their love for Him had readied them to see Him with the imaging faculty of their hearts. He comes to them, and they see Him with the eye of the heart. 

In His coming, He gives them a task: He breathes into them holy, healing Spirit, in order that they may work in a strengthening, healing way in the destinies of those whom they meet. Their hearts are to be open, filled with trust in His power, so that they may also see Him at work in the lives of others. They begin to trust in His power working in their hearts, in others, as a new capacity of seeing. 

Poet Denise Levertov describes this moment of awakening in her poem about St. Thomas, who says: 

But when my hand

Led by His hand’s firm clasp

Entered the unhealed wound,

Wayne Forte
My fingers encountering

Rib-bone and pulsing heat,

What I felt was…

…light, light streaming

Into me, over me, filling the room…

I witnessed

all things quicken to color, to form,

My question

Not answered, but given

Its part

In a vast unfolding design lit

By a risen sun.* 

The Act of Consecration of Man is also a picture of Christ’s working. Gathered in prayer, we receive Him in the inner room of our heart. Our hearts see Him offering thanks to His Father. We see Him uniting His soul with bread, with water and wine. We feel His touch. He breathes His peace into us so that we too can work in a healing way in the lives of others, ‘in a vast unfolding design, lit by a risen sun.’

 

* Denise Levertov, “St. Thomas Didymus”, in The Stream and the Sapphire, p. 81

 www.thechristiancommunity.org

 

Sunday, February 2, 2020

4th Epiphany 2020, Restoring

4th Epiphany
Luke 13: 10-17

Kenneth Dowdy
Once he was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit weakening her for eighteen years: she was bent over and could not stand upright [lift her head all the way up]. When Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, “Woman, you are released from your illness!”

He laid his hands upon her, and at once she was able to straighten up. And she praised the power of God. Then the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days for doing work; on those days you can come and let yourselves be healed—but not on the Sabbath.”

But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Does not every one of you untie his ox or his ass from the manger on the Sabbath and lead it away to the water trough? But this daughter of Abraham, who was held bound by the dark might of Satan for eighteen years, wasn’t supposed to be released from her bondage on the day of the Sabbath?”


All his opponents were put to shame by these words, and the people rejoiced over all the signs of spiritual power that happened through him.

4th Epiphany
February 2, 2020
Luke 13: 10-17

Tissot
The woman in the Gospel could not stand upright. She was subject to the hardening imprisonment of the adversary. The effect of such imprisonment was likely painful misery, a sense of being severely hampered, forced to face earthward like an animal, cut off.

Jesus is in the synagogue teaching. It is the Sabbath, the day of rest, the day for remembering back to the human being’s divine origins. It is the day for remembering how God created human beings in His own image and likeness: radiant with light, bursting with life, exuding love.

Christ, the Creator, calls the woman to him. And she responds to his call. The power of his divine, creating Word releases her soul and spirit from the adversary’s dark might. Then Christ places his hands on her and creates her anew. She rises upright. The image of the original human being is restored in her. Once more, she is the picture of humanity: head in the stars, feet firmly planted on the earth, heart free.

But there are others there whose souls continue to be bound by Satan’s dark power. They indignantly chastise Him and all the others for doing work on the Sabbath instead of resting and remembering. How ironic that for them, remembering how human beings once were, seems more important than re-creating, restoring the human being in front of them.

And Christ’s response once again overcomes the dark power that works, not only in human bodies but also in human souls. For love and goodwill, like water, like sunshine, will flow outward wherever needed. To stop Christ’s will is to darken the sun, to dam up the life-giving waters.

The results of Christ’s admonishment are shame and joy. Shame for what we recognize in ourselves. Joy in recognizing the healing warmth of the Christ-Sun. And hope—the hope of healing for all humankind

As Denise Levertov says:

It’s when we face for a moment
The worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
The taint in our own selves, that awe
Cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
Not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
To no innocent form
But to this creature vainly sure
It and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
As guest, as brother,
The word.*

* “On the Mystery of the Incarnation”, in The Stream and the Sapphire, by Denise Levertov, p. 19



.


Sunday, December 9, 2018

2nd Advent 2018, Accept or Refuse

Conrad von Soest
2nd Advent
Luke 1: 26-38

During the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth to a maiden engaged to a man named Joseph of the descendants of David, and the maiden’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said her, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”

But she was confused at those words, and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God.

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call him Jesus.
He will be great, and will be called the Son of the most High,
And the Lord your God will give him the Throne of David your father.
And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever;
And his kingdom will have no end. “
And Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have never known a man?”

And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; And for that reason, the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God. And behold, even your kinswoman Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For no word is spoken in the worlds of the spirit that does not have the power to become reality on earth.

And Mary said, “Behold, I am the Lord’s handmaid; may it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her.


2nd Advent
December 9, 2018
James Janknegt
Luke 1: 26-38

"Annunciation"
Denise Levertov

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
                  The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
                                            God waited.

She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

Henry Ossawa Tanner

Mary is the archetype of the human soul. And annunciations come to all of us. Even in barrenness, our own souls, too, can conceive. We can absorb accurate conceptions of Christ. We can open ourselves to how He wants to be conceived in us. We can make our souls virginal, incapable of harm and receptive for God's healing Spirit so that we can bear Him within. And we can say yes or no to whatever God sends as personal destiny, as community destiny, as world destiny. We can agree to serve His purposes in humility. Or not.

Christ wants to be born in us. His angels draw near, whispering words of great moment and encouragement. And as angels always say when they approach, 'Do not be afraid. The Lord is with you.'

God is waiting. We are free to accept or refuse.



Sunday, December 2, 2018

1st Advent 2018, Drawing Near

1st Advent
Luke 21: 25-36 (adapted by the author)

Revealing spiritual signs will appear in sun, moon and stars, signs that the spiritual world is again drawing near to humanity. On the earth, however, the peoples will be in distress, helpless before the rushing of the world ether sea, whose waves touch the earth. Human beings will lose the inner strength that is based only on the earthly,  in fear and foreboding of everything that is coming over the earth.

Eye of God, Helix Nebula
For even the world powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then, however, they will look upon the Son of Man, the future image of human beings, how He approaches out of the being of the clouds that surround the earth, how He comes in dynamic power, a power that is higher than anything that approaches human beings; how he comes in the shining of his God-imbued revelation. When this begins to happen, stand upright and raise your mind’s senses to the spirit.

For the hour of your liberation, free to experience the spirit world, is near.

And He spoke a parable: look at the fig tree and all the other trees. When they are in bud, you can see this and you yourself know that summer is near. Just so, when you see all this, shall you recognize the world transformative events through which the divine kingdom wants to open your inner being from now on, for the kingdom of God is approaching you.
Roland Tiller

The truth I say to you: this humanity living today will not pass away before all this is fulfilled. Heaven and earth will perish; my words, however, will not perish. 

Do not burden your hearts with excess in eating and drinking, so that your hearts do not fall prey to lethargy or intoxication. And beware of all unnecessary worries about your outer subsistence, so that the light of world-days does not come over you unprepared, like a choking snare. For it will come for all who live on the face of the whole earth. So at all times be of wakeful spirit in prayerful thought, so that you may find the strength to escape everything that is to happen, and may stand before the Son of Man.

1st Advent
December 1, 2018
Luke 21: 25-36

Buddha, Jan de Kok
Although we are approaching the depth of midwinter, the gospel reading, oddly perhaps, speaks of the coming spring. It brings to our mind’s eye the image of the fig tree bursting into leaf. In Christ’s time, the fig tree was like the bodhi tree of enlightenment under which Buddha sat; it was the tree that represented a broader, enlightened awareness.

This reading, however, gives us the content of a higher awareness: the living Son of Man, radiant and powerful, coming toward us in the realm of the clouds, in the biosphere, the realm of life.

This year has been a year in which there have been shifts in awareness. There
Brian Jekel
are signs…signs that human beings are moving into an anxious awareness of the damage to the wholeness of the living earth; into a heart awareness that aches at the catastrophic treatment of other members of the human family. These are signs that the kingdom of God is arising in human hearts. The angels, full of hope, are watching closely.

But, as the poet Denise Levertov says:

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
…to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.*

 Now especially, we are urged to pay attention, to stand upright, awake and at the ready. For He who is the living Spirit of the Earth is once again approaching us. 



* “Witness”, by Denise Levertov in Selected Poems

Sunday, July 8, 2018

3rd St. Johnstide 2018, Invisible Gold

Ghirlandaio
St. Johnstide
Luke 3: 7-18

John said to the crowds coming out
to be baptized by him, “You are sons of the serpent yet! Who led you to believe that you can avoid the decline of the old ways of the soul? Produce true fruits in keeping with a change of heart and mind. And do not begin excusing yourselves by saying, “We have Abraham as our father.” For I tell you that God can raise up sons for Abraham out of these stones. The ax is already poised at the root of the trees, so every tree that does not produce good fruit is felled and thrown into the fire.”

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Let the man with two tunics share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”

Tax collectors also came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” Do not collect any more than you are authorized to do,” he told them.
         
Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Do not intimidate and do not accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ, the Messiah.

John answered them all, “I wash you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will wash you with the breath of the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, while he burns up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
 

And with many and various exhortations John preached the good news to the people.
Buddha, Jan de Kok

3rd St. Johnstide
July 8, 2018
Luke 3: 7-18

Sometimes the sweetest fruit comes from an old tree; but usually, it is a tree that has been long cared for with thoughtful pruning and generous stimulus to growth.

One of humanity’s old ‘cultural trees’ is Buddha’s eightfold path. This path is a call to be mindful of how a one thinks and acts. Buddha encourages us to make rightful decisions based on appropriate strivings and to accurately recollect and contemplate our past thoughts and actions.

The eightfold path is echoed in today’s reading. John the Baptist’s suggestions for preparing our hearts and minds for an encounter with Christ is especially relevant for today: Share; don’t hoard. Don’t take advantage. Don’t intimidate. In other words, curb your selfishness. Be generous. Be content.

These
Tree of Life, Tiffany
heart generosities and soul prunings produce “good fruits in keeping with a change of heart and mind”. It doesn’t matter how young or how old the soul. Nor do one’s genetics, social standing or cultural heritage matter either. We all can practice cultivating our own hearts and minds. For every tree that does not produce good fruit is of no real use to the world. No matter how insignificant our outer lives may otherwise seem, our hearts and minds can become like the tree described by Denise Levertov:
 
    …this tree, behold,
    glows from within;
    haloed in visible
    invisible gold.*



*Denise Levertov, “Last Night's Dream”

Sunday, September 17, 2017

9th August/September Trinity 2016, Vertiginous Clarity (Redux)

9th August Trinity
Matthew 6; 19-23

“Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where you have gathered a treasure, there your heart will bear you.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

9th August Trinity
Sept 18, 2016
Matthew 6; 19-23

We know, at least intellectually, that we cannot take our physical possessions with us across the threshold of death. We even make ironic jokes, like ‘he who dies with the most toys wins!’ But even if we could somehow bring them with us, they would eventually disintegrate because they belong to the world of the transitory.

We are encouraged to store up heart-treasures, treasures that we can take with us through death. One such heart treasure is reverence and wonder toward God, toward our fellow human beings and toward the living being of nature. The health and vitality of our soul, indeed of our whole organism, depends on the manner in which we look at the world. If we look at the world through eyes open in wonder, filled with awe, then seeing through such eyes generates light, both inwardly and outwardly. Through wonder and awe, we gain the light of knowledge and the light of wisdom. Our eyes will shine. Lacking reverence before God, man and nature, our souls begin to darken. Even our bodily organism becomes darker and harder, less translucent. Awe enlightens. 
The poet says:

Never between the branches has the sky
burned with such brilliance, as if
it were offering all of its light to me,
to say – what? what urgent mystery
strains at that transparent mouth?
….the air
suddenly arches itself like this into infinity,
and glitters.

This evening, far from here,
a friend is entering his death,
he knows it, he walks
under bare trees alone,
perhaps for the last time. So much love,
so much struggle, spent and worn thin.
But when he looks up, suddenly the sky
is arrayed in this same vertiginous clarity.*

For, as Christ says, ‘Where you have gathered a treasure, there your heart will bear you’.**

*Jean Joubert, “Brilliant Sky,” Trans. by Denise Levertov in The Gift of Tongues, ed. by Sam Hamill
** Matthew 6:21

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Sunday, February 22, 2015

3rd February Trinity 2015, The Quiet Mystery


Blake
3rd, 4th February Trinity
(Sunday after Ash Wednesday)
Matthew 4: 1-11

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the loneliness of the desert to experience the tempting power of the adversary.

After fasting forty days and nights, He felt for the first time hunger for earthly nourishment. Then the tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, let these stones become bread through the power of your word.”

Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘The human being shall not live on bread alone; he lives by the creative power of every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”


Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the parapet of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Again a third time, the devil took him to a very elevated place, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give to you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me as your Lord."

Botticelli
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship [pray to] God your Lord who guides you and serve him only.’”

Then the adversary left him, and he beheld again the angels as they came to bring him nourishment.



3rd February Trinity
(Sunday after Ash Wednesday)
Matthew 4: 1-11

Monreale
We are spiritual beings living in earthly human bodies. Over the course of the ages, these bodies have become ‘infected. ’ To use a computer analogy, it is as though adversarial beings have inserted various viruses into our human constitution. They have so-to-speak’ corrupted our files’. They are attempting to commandeer them in order to make us do things not originally intended by the Maker. Jesus is our security adviser. He helps us figure out how to work around the problems.

First we are not to pay attention solely to the earthly side of things. We are to recognize that we are nourished not only by bread, but also by all that we take in of the earthly. But most importantly we are nourished and sustained by the intangible creative Power behind all that is, the very Source of our existence.

By contrast we are also not to rely solely or foolishly on the heavenly either. We are to use our earthly judgment and sense of responsibility, our capacity of clear thinking. If we keep visiting those internal sites of infection, if we listen to the illusions of pride, we will fall. We are not to put the heavenly world to the test.

And furthermore, we are to recognize and distinguish clearly between God and the adversary’s infections. We are guard against illusion and delusion. We are to serve and follow the Original Source.

The poet Denise Levertov describes our human condition, our position between heaven and earth:

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.[1]




[1] Denise Levertov,  “Primary Wonder” in Selected Poems 

Monday, July 21, 2014

4th St. Johnstide 2012, Good Fruits

St. Johnstide
John 3: 22-36

After this Jesus and his disciples came to the land of Judea. There he stayed with them and baptized. John also baptized; he was at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there, and people came to him and were baptized. For John had not yet been imprisoned.

Then a dispute arose between the disciples of John and the Jews about the path of purification. And they came to John and said to him, “Master, he who came to you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness – here he is, baptizing, and everyone is going to him.”

Balduino
John answered, “No human being can grasp spiritual power for himself that is not given to him from the higher worlds. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’

“He who has the bride, he is the bridegroom. But the friend of the bridegroom, who stands by and listens to him, he is filled with joy at the bridegroom’s voice. This joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease.

He who descends from above, out of the spiritual world, is elevated above all beings of the earth. Whoever is only of the earth, whose being arises from the earthly, his word is also earthbound.

He who comes from the heavens is elevated above all who have arisen from the earthly. What he has seen and heard in the world of the spirit, to that he can bear direct witness, but no one accepts his testimony.

But whoever accepts his testimony, sets his seal to this: that God is true [truth] [that there is no higher truth than the reality of God]. Whoever God has sent, his words are filled with the power of divine thought, for God gives the spirit to human beings not according to human rules, but according to the creative power that he awakens in man.

The Father holds the Son surrounded in his love, and has given everything into his hands. Whoever trusts in the power of the Son within himself, he grows out of the earthly into timeless life.

Whoever cannot trust in the power of the Son within will not behold the world of life; rather the working might of the spirit world must one day burn him like a fire that will consume him.”


4th St. Johnstide
July 15, 2012
Luke 3: 7-18

Sometimes the sweetest fruit comes from an old tree; but usually it is a tree that has been long cared for with thoughtful pruning and generous stimulus to growth.

One of humanity’s old ‘cultural trees’ is Buddha’s eightfold path. The path is a call to be mindful of how a one thinks and acts. He encourages us to make rightful decisions based on appropriate strivings, and to accurately recollect and contemplate our past thoughts and actions.

The eightfold path is echoed in today’s reading. John the Baptist’s suggestions for preparing our hearts and minds for an encounter with Christ is especially relevant for today:

Share, don’t hoard. Speak truth. Don’t intimidate.

J.P. de Rothchild
These are the heart generosities and soul prunings that produce “good fruits in keeping with a change of heart and mind”. It doesn’t matter how young or how old the soul. Neither do genetics, social standing or cultural heritage matter. We all can practice cultivating our own hearts and minds. For every tree that does not produce good fruit is of no use to the world. No matter how insignificant our outer lives may otherwise seem, our hearts and minds can become like the tree described by Denise Levertov:
  
    …this tree, behold,
    glows from within;
    haloed in visible
    invisible gold.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org



[1] Denise Levertov,  “Last Night's Dream”

  


Thursday, July 3, 2014

1st St. Johnstide 2009, Invisible Gold

St. Johnstide
Luke 3: 7-18

Tiepolo
John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You are sons of the serpent yet! Who led you to believe that you can avoid the decline of the old ways of the soul? Produce true fruits in keeping with a change of heart and mind. And do not begin excusing yourselves by saying, “We have Abraham as our father.” For I tell you that God can raise up sons for Abraham out of these stones. The ax is already poised at the root of the trees, so every tree that does not produce good fruit is felled and thrown into the fire.”

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked.

John answered, “Let the man with two tunics share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”

Tax collectors also came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”

“Do not collect any more than you are authorized to do,” he told them.
           
Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He replied, “Do not intimidate and do not accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ, the Messiah.

John answered them all, “I wash you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will wash you with the breath of the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, while he burns up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

And with many and various exhortations John preached the good news to the people.

St. Johnstide
June 24, 28, 2009
Luke 3; 7 – 18


Very young trees need to be staked until they are strong enough to withstand heavy weather. And trees heavily laden with fruit may need their branches propped so as not to break. But full grown and post harvest, such external helps are no longer necessary.

The Mosaic law, the rules of proper behavior, were necessary when humankind was very young, to help it grow straight and strong. And it remained so when the people were heavily laden with the rich fruits of their own development.

John came to prepare us for the time when the fruits of the old ways would be harvested, and the old props would no longer be necessary. For we are all heavily laden.

Albert Einstein said,

"Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built
upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received."

A new law being written, a law of gratitude and love. It applies to every human being, regardless of pedigree. It is to be a law of compassion and fairness. It is to be a new tree, a living tree planted in the human heart.

and this tree, behold,
    glows from within;
    haloed in visible
    invisible gold.[1]


www.thechristiancommunity.org


[1] Denise Levertov, “Last Night’s Dream”.