St. Thomas

St. Thomas Didymus
poem by Denise Levertov

In the hot street at noon I saw him
a small man
gray but vivid, standing forth
beyond the crowd's buzzing
holding in desperate grip his shaking teeth gnashing son,

and thought him my brother.

I heard him cry out, weeping and speak
those words,
Lord, I believe, help thou
mine unbelief,

and knew him
my twin:

a man whose entire being
had knotted itself
into the one tight drawn question,
Why,
why has this child lost his childhood in suffering,
why is this child who will soon be a man
tormented, torn, twisted?
Why is he cruelly punished
who has done nothing except be born?

The twin of my birth
was not so close
as that man I heard
say what my heart
sighed with each beat, my breath silently
cried in and out,
in and out.

After the healing,
he, with his wondering
newly peaceful boy, receded;
no one
dwells on the gratitude, the astonished joy,
the swift
acceptance and forgetting.
I did not follow
to see their changed lives.
What I retained
was the flash of kinship. Despite
all that I witnessed,
his question remained
my question, throbbed like a stealthy cancer,
known
only to doctor and patient. To others
I seemed well enough.

So it was
that after Golgotha
my spirit in secret
lurched in the same convulsed writhings
that tore that child
before he was healed.

And after the empty tomb
when they told me that He lived, had spoken to Magdalene,
told me
that though He had passed through the door like a ghost
He had breathed on them
the breath of a living man --
even then
when hope tried with a flutter of wings to lift me --
still, alone with myself,
my heavy cry was the same: Lord
I believe,
help thou mine unbelief.

I needed
blood to tell me the truth,
the touch
of blood. Even
my sight of the dark crust of it
round the nail holes
didn't thrust its meaning all the way through
to that manifold knot in me
that willed to possess all knowledge,
refusing to loosen
unless that insistence won
the battle I fought with life.

But when my hand
led by His hand's firm clasp
entered the unhealed wound,
my fingers encountering
rib-bone and pulsing heat,
what I felt was not
scalding pain, shame for my obstinate need,
but light, light streaming
into me, over me, filling the room
as I had lived till then
in a cold cave, and now
coming forth for the first time,
the knot that bound me unravelling,
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.

____________

and a "haiku" from me:

Our God
loves
doubts,
questions...
puzzles make
her smile.

Contemplation

Continuing my contemplation on the Emmaus story, I am helped to enter more deeply into its mystery through the poem The Servant Girl at Emmaus by Denise Levertov. It's actually a literary description and at the same time a commentary on Diego Velazquez’s Supper at Emmaus which I bring to a close-up here.

Levertov enters Emmaus through the servant girl’s eyes:

She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his – the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?

Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?

Surely that face– ?

The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching
the winejug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,

swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.

Sight strengthened by Love

While searching for paintings of the Emmaus story (see Lk 24:13-35) in the internet, I chanced on a very different artistic rendering of this Easter narrative, by the Spanish painter Diego Velazquez.
In the painting, we almost fail to notice the figure of Christ and the disciples in the background. Instead it is the servant girl at the foreground, amid pots and pans, who catches our attention. Yet, our gaze does not stop there since her eyes carry us obliquely to the “event” taking place in the other room!
What a beautiful way of suggesting the hidden significance of the Easter story in the daily grind of life. Here’s one attempt of deepening this interpretation: “(In the painting) the fact that it is hard—even for those who are open to the divine— to see and understand things directly is underscored. No matter how important (even when framed) events are, it is only in a de-centered and marginal fashion that truth becomes suddenly—and, perhaps, only temporarily—manifest. Not by chance, both a servant and a kitchen are, respectively, socially marginal and, in general, logistically de-centered."
For more on this, you can read Cristina Giorcelli’s article.

My Easter journey this year is quite a special one since I’m trying to come to terms with some very significant events in my personal life (deaths of precious persons in the year past, etc). Like the servant girl in this story-painting, it is only “obliquely” that I am seeing the meaning of all these and perceiving the saving presence of our Lord in my life and in the lives of those I care for.
I know I need to pray for a more purified vision, a way of seeing that is strengthened by love. Daniel O’Leary, one of my favorite writers, inspires me: Love fills in the gaps and heals the flaws. It sees perfection from within, the beauty already there.

May the Lord grant us all this Easter grace of seeing his saving grace and experiencing “joy in the world as it is, in life as it is, in every hour of life in this world, as that hour is.” (Buber, Tales of Hasidism)

Easter Question

“Women desirous
desiring their Dead
Saviour to anoint…

But alas, he is
no more!
Desire transformed
liberating all desire!”

This is my Easter “haiku” as I contemplate Mary Magdalene and the other women friends of Jesus who, very early after the Sabbath, went out with the intention of touching their dead Master and anointing him, in order to complete the burial rites he merited. (Mt 28:1-6)
Love moved them – to brave the dark, even to risk being identified with him who was condemned as a “criminal.” Love left them, but only for awhile, to awaken, to increase desire and transformed them into who they are called to be – lovers, one and all.
Fearless, passionate lover. The more I live, the more I come to be convinced that there’s no other way to define a disciple of Jesus but this. And I got a confirmation from one of the quotes in the latest issue of The Tablet:

“So when you say to yourself each year, “How shall I observe Easter?”, don’t say, “Do I understand the atonement?” (…) Above all, don’t ask moral questions about whether you are good enough, whether you have obeyed enough.
No, don’t ask those questions at Easter. Ask yourself instead whether you are a lover.
Ask yourself whether you can love much. Ask yourself whether your passion will sustain you – kill you, yes, but sustain you – through your death and his so that you too can await him in the Garden on Easter morning. (Melvyn Matthews, Nearer than Breathing, SPCK 2002)