Poets & Saints

John 14:2–3 (NIV)

My Father's house has many rooms;

if that were not so,

would I have told you

that I am going there to prepare a place for you?

And if I go and prepare a place for you,

I will come back

and take you to be with me

that you also may be where I am.

I press on — further up and further in.

C.S. Lewis, from The Last Battle

"I have come home at last!

This is my real country!

I belong here.

This is the land I have been looking for all my life,

though I've never seen it till now.

The reason we loved the old Narnia

is that it sometimes looked a little like this.

Come further up, come further in!"

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Hebrews 11:13 (KJV)

These all died in faith,

not having received the promises,

but having seen them afar off,

and were persuaded of them,

and embraced them,

and confessed that they were strangers

and pilgrims on the earth.

I am an animal en route to another native land.

Gregory of Nazianzus, from an Easter Sermon

"The great Architect of the universe

conceived and produced a being

endowed with both natures,

visible and invisible.

He created a being at once earthly and heavenly,

insecure and immortal,

visible and invisible,

halfway between greatness and nothingness,

flesh and spirit at the same time —

an animal en route to another native land,

and most mysterious of all,

made to resemble God

by simple submission to the divine will."

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2 Corinthians 4:18 (NIV)

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,

but on what is unseen,

since what is seen is temporary,

but what is unseen is eternal.

I am latent with unseen existences.

Brian Zahnd, from Unseen Existences

"Once we acknowledge the reality of a spiritual world,

we can understand life as a pilgrimage of the soul

toward our true telos —

our true aim, our true goal, our true end:

union with God."

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Song of Songs 2:4 (NIV)

Let him lead me to the banquet hall,

and let his banner over me be love.

I welcome the stranger who is myself.

Derek Walcott, from Love After Love

"The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Sit. Feast on your life."

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Revelation 21:5 (NIV)

He who was seated on the throne said,

"I am making everything new!"

Then he said,

"Write this down,

for these words are trustworthy and true."

What was broken has become the ground of something new.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, from The Brothers Karamazov

"Love all God's creation,

the whole and every grain of sand in it.

Love every leaf, every ray of God's light.

Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.

If you love everything,

you will perceive the divine mystery in things.

Once you have perceived it,

you will begin to comprehend it better every day.

And you will come at last

to love the whole world

with an all-embracing love."

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Exodus 3:14 (NIV)

God said to Moses,

"I am who I am.

This is what you are to say to the Israelites:

'I am has sent me to you.'"

Simply that you are.

Richard Rohr, from The Universal Christ

"Anything is a sacrament

if it serves as a shortcut to the Infinite,

but it will always be hidden

in something that is very finite."

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Romans 8:18 (NIV)

I consider that our present sufferings

are not worth comparing

with the glory that will be revealed in us.

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

C.S. Lewis, from The Problem of Pain

"We can ignore even pleasure.

But pain insists upon being attended to.

God whispers to us in our pleasures,

speaks in our conscience,

but shouts in our pains:

it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

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Genesis 1:31 (NIV)

God saw all that he had made,

and it was very good.

And there was evening, and there was morning —

the sixth day.

I am held in a world that was made for me.

Thomas Traherne, from Centuries of Meditations

"You never enjoy the world aright,

till the Sea itself floweth in your veins,

till you are clothed with the heavens,

and crowned with the stars:

and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world,

and more than so,

because men are in it

who are every one sole heirs as well as you.

Till you love men so as to desire their happiness,

with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own:

till you delight in God for being good to all:

you never enjoy the world."

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2 Corinthians 3:18 (NIV)

And we all, who with unveiled faces

contemplate the Lord's glory,

are being transformed into his image

with ever-increasing glory,

which comes from the Lord, who is Spirit.

Heaven begins now, in being fully seen.

Richard Rohr, from The Universal Christ

"Any loving gaze that we can dare to receive

can start the Flow:

creation itself, animals, humans —

all are the divine gaze

if we allow them to be.

One day, the mirror will reflect in both directions,

and we will see over there

what was allowed in here.

This is full-access seeing — and being seen:

most have named it 'heaven'

and it begins now.

Let this Divine Mirror fully receive you.

All of you.

And you never need be lonely again."

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Psalm 139:1–4 (NIV)

You have searched me, Lord,

and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

you, Lord, know it completely.

God receives me fully. I am redeemed in being seen.

Richard Rohr, from The Universal Christ

"God is a mirror big enough to receive everything,

and every single part of you,

just as it is,

rejecting nothing,

adjusting nothing.

Whatever is fully received in this Mirror

is by that very fact 'redeemed.'

God always sees and loves God in you.

It seems like God has no choice.

This is God's eternal and unilateral contract with the soul."

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