the noise, of the culture of darkness and
death and once deep inside my soul
allow my heart to travel the world,
neither time, distance, nor heat of day, or
cold of night,
inhibits the heart from traveling.
Eyes wide open, ears attentive, seeking,
seeing,
listening, I arrive in a huge city, filled with
minarets,
while hot desert winds blasts sand against my
face, as though
a legion of furies is afoot.
I looked towards those towers, hear the call to
prayer,
sounding like a howl, a howl of millennia voices,
seeking God, yet aware of loss of Christ.
Walking through crowded bazars, down alleys,
hearing explosions as various sects
slaughter-bomb each other,
the cries of mothers overpowering all other
sounds,
the ocean of their tears turning sand to earth,
as their tears become within my heart as
shards of glass.
My prayer O Jesus that You
reveal Yourself to them, comfort them for they
are
huddled before You like the women who cried out
to You at Your eighth station on the via
dolorosa.
Whirl of prayer wheels, clinking of thumb
cymbals,
sound of bells, air heavy with incense and
dampness
permeates my body, high amongst mountain
clouds,
my unshod feet sense the cold of stone hallways
as
towards me on the air comes the relentless
guttural
chant of robed monks, seated amongst huge
statues of
Buddha and dragons.
My cheeks wet with tears, my soul trembles, as
in this
place of angry, dark spirits I feel the pain of
unrequited
yearning, see You bent over, weeping with Your
longing to shatter the darkness,
to illumine these hearts.
I embrace another onslaught of shards of glass,
for unknowing yet knowing,
they seek Your pierced open heart, gateway to
love and mercy.
How I yearn my own heart, for all who cry, who
seek,
be opened as passageway to You.
There is no tiredness, no hunger, no thirst,
save a participation
in Your sitio, when heart-traveling.
No sense of passage of time,
rather wonderment and, be there any burden, it
is the bearing of
burdens weighing upon those we see, hear, meet,
Suddenly, it is heat and humidity of amazon
jungle depths,
amongst a people so isolated there is no
awareness of You or
of others, persons like themselves,
but there is a hunger, deep-relentless-hunger,
for within
each man, woman, child, longing for the True
Bread, seeking for
a guiding star, such that each time a newborn
is gazed upon
tears of longing flow, for some how they know
that this is not yet
the expected Child – and these tear-shards are
luminous and enter
my heart as gift.
There are places hidden from public view and
media scrutiny,
peopled with millions of our brothers and
sisters, men, women,
children.
They have names soaked in blood, hatred and
despair: gulag,
death camps, labour camps, concentration camps,
refugee
camps, prisons: max, super-max, minimum, or the
seemingly
less harsh: jails.
Other such places of suffering have names
supposedly to
assure ourselves the suffering are not
forgotten: homeless shelters,
soup kitchens, emergency shelters for the
battered and abused,
hospices, hospitals of all varieties, nursing
homes – yet,
yet, in all these places, move dark
shadow-spirits of fear, loneliness,
and death.
There are too dark alleys and steam grates,
tents among the thick
trees of city parks,
I must walk within all these places, must smell
the smells, hear the screams,
gather the tears – for human tears, like
Christ’s, are the most
precious droplets of water upon the earth – for
tears flow as sadness, as
cry that someone might hear me, see me, and
tears sometimes flow as
joy for a human being has been born, a love
offered, a dawn unfolds,
snow caresses the cheeks of laughing humans
skiing, snowboarding,
watching a child gamble about – but the places
I am in now are places of
pain’s tears while echoes within these places,
as from the depths
of a spatial black hole, a voice hateful and harsh,
angry
because the darkness spews forth with each word
– for
satan is the bearer of despair and cannot
choose blindness for the
brightness of Christ dwelling within all who
suffer, are wounded,
alone, shreds all darkness,
yet the voice is that of a Dostoyevskyian Grand
Inquisitor,
demanding Christ leave, abandon the very ones
He so loves,
loves so every tear is His, every pain is His,
and must be for me.
I touch the shards of glass that have so filled
my heart it
is as if my heart is made of glass – become a
prism -
of His light that ever more,
as I go where human beings are,
wherever human beings are,
His Light will shatter the darkness,
restore life, wipe away all tears.
For now, a rest from the journey that
at His altar lifting the paten there be a
place within the bread for everyone who has
no place, lifting the chalice that all blood
shed,
every tear wept, be comingled therein with
the wine,
and once I have spoke His words and Bread,
Wine become Him and I am nourished,
my heart has room for more shards and
the journey begins anew.
Alleluia!