The Fragrance of Christ to God

Posted on February 3, 2014 by nstaniger under Literary/Poetry, Religion/Spirituality

Burn my soul, dear God above, that all dross this day may banished be. I offer here myself a sacrifice, blinded by the blemish that I have become. The sin which so easily entangles has done well its work in me, until from the depths I cry unto Thee, knowing full well that Thine is the only hand that can make me clean. Yet lingers a fear, a shame that downcasts my soul – have I the faith to touch Thy hem as a woman years ago had done? This is the fire of which I speak: a cleansing flame by Spirit driven that returns me to the dust from which I came. But in my dying I am raised, for spotless Christ proclaims, “She is in Me and I in her – My blood has made us one”. The fragrance now raised before the Throne is that of mingled flesh, as all sin, shame and spot are burned. My Husband has once again presented a spotless Bride to Thee.

Oh would that it did end there! But you, my whoring soul, are so like Israel, that day after after day this same must be done. How great is my desire to be true, faithful, and pure and yet how great my shame as once again you find me selling my soul to another. How well Thou knowest Hosea’s grief! I beg, therefore, that through judgement and patience Thou would teach me to be a Wife. I seek to be not a daughter of Eve but a daughter of Mary. Through the power of Christ, may the incense of this handmaiden’s faithful prayers be greater than the fragrance of my sacrificed sins. And in this may I be a pleasing aroma, the Fragrance of Christ to Thee.

God’s Grandeur

Posted on January 14, 2014 by nstaniger under Literary/Poetry, Uncategorized

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil

crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and bears man’s smell; the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black west went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–

Because the Holy Ghost, over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

-Gerard Hopkins

We’re All Terminal

Posted on November 21, 2013 by nstaniger under Family, Life, Literary/Poetry, Musings, Nature

I wake. I write, I write it all, I write it now because now is all I have. The moment to come may bring a waking child, a mosquito vibrating around my ear, or a jack-hammer trying to break through the concrete and my reverie. But now, now is silent. Now is mine. In the recent past (recent is, of course, relative to your sense of time; for here I will say recent is few years), I have not written for fear. Fear of being too full to write. Fear of starting in the wrong place and not having time (when did time become so precious?) to end where I wanted. These are surface things.

I am not secretive. My thoughts are scarce my own before they’re shared. This is how I live, how I’ve always lived. Open. Flowers stay open under the right circumstances: water, sun, earth, chlorophyll and photosynthesis. They take droplets of light and turn them into life. During the span of time which I’ve called the recent past, there is a deeper reason I have not written. It has something to do with nyctinasty, that mysterious lot of flowers that close at night. The nyctinastics elude scientific explanation. Some think that the petals grow at different rates of speed, so the top petals are forced to shut. Maybe. Others say that the flower is protecting its powers of reproduction by closing at night, when the dew is the heaviest. No one knows why they close, but scientists keep making up answers. We will never know because flowers are not emotive nor, under most circumstances, talkative.

A butterfly cannot always be beautifully fluttering about. We grew butterflies in our living room. They started as specks and grew into caterpillars at an alarming rate. Then, magic happened. The greatest change occurred out of sight. Somehow a speck grabbed a blanket, wrapped it close around itself with hot cocoa and came out a butterfly, fully equipped with the latest flying paraphernalia. Magic. I, too, closed up for the night. Special blanket in tow, I plopped a marshmallow into my cocoa and cocooned myself for an indefinite length of minutes. Or years. Grace abounded. I’ve changed and been changed. Marriage changed me, changes me. Motherhood transformed me, transforms me. My wings may not have hardened yet, but they will soon. I feel it coming and I will fly.

The first butterfly we released into the great outdoors burst out strongly. She almost made it to the sidewalk when a mockingbird dove and tackled it, quite brutally, to the ground in front of my two-year-old daughter. Life is bloody. Death is inevitable. What would I write if it were my last day? What would I write to you if it were yours? We are all terminal. I write again because now is all I have.

The Heart

Posted on August 25, 2009 by nstaniger under Literary/Poetry, Musings

“Nowadays the word heart always sounds a little naive or commonplace. When I was young it could still be spoken without embarrassment, but now it’s a term no one uses anymore. On the rare occasions when it gets mentioned, the reference isn’t to the heart in the fullest sense of the word, but only to some malfunction, anemic tissue caused by a blocked artery, say, or problems with an auricle; there’s no longer so much as a hint about the heart as the center, the essence of human nature. I’ve often wondered why it’s been ostracized like this.
“He who puts his trust in his own heart is a fool” – Augusto often used to say that, quoting the Bible. But why on earth should such a person be a fool? Is it because the heart is like a combustion chamber? Because there’s darkness inside there, darkness and fire? The mind is as modern as the heart is ancient. These days people who follow their hearts are considered to be close to the animal world, to uninhibited nature, while those who follow reason are close to the upper spheres of reflection. But suppose things aren’t like that, suppose they’re just the opposite? Suppose it’s this excess of reason that’s starving our lives?”
-susanna tamaro