Constrained

I caught my shadow as I passed through the red-sifted sunlight: a figure with an oversized straw hat surrounded - no, ambushed – easily, by twenty children. I had two by the hand; five had me by both my arms. All of them were pulling me onward, pulling me down towards them. Is this kabod? I dared to think. Is THIS the weight of glory? They peered into my mirrored shades to catch their own reflections and I matched their inquisitiveness by staring them straight back in their deep chocolate eyes. I caught my own reflection in their translucent orbs and for once in my life, I liked what I saw.

I’m bound by this grace I’ve been shown. I do not know why He has allowed me to see such incredible glimpses of Him and His Kingdom because I’m so unworthy. Paradoxically, though I know it is death, I bid Him, “Show me more of You!”

In this crossroads of humanity dwells the mystery. Me seeing Christ in you; you seeing Christ in me. Perhaps it’s another layer of what Paul was getting at in Ephesians when he wrote, “’Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and
the church.” Divine and dust intertwined.

As usual, our favorite modern philosopher/theologian, Clive, states it so spot on: “What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more – something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

As St. John of the Cross wrote, “amado con amada, amada en el amado transformada!” Translated: night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved.

We long to see Beauty, Himself – to witness the sublime. But more than that, we long to pass into Beauty, lose ourselves, and become one with this Beauty.

“Beauty requires no justification, no explanation; it simply is and transcends. See beauty and we know it in the marrow, even if we have no words for it: Someone is behind it, in it. Beauty Himself completes.” Ann Voskamp

May I never be divorced from the wonder of it all.