Today I present one of my favorite poems from my book Never Give Up (click HERE to learn more). Those of you who know the book are aware of the way in which its narrative is interspersed with poetic prayer reflections, not unlike those I've posted on this blog.
I thought this text was appropriate during Easter week, as our daily toil is touched by the glory of a great hope.
At the heart of this "Divine Mercy Week" is the aspiration and the prayer for the virtue of trust. We hardly even know what it means to trust.
Therefore we must ask of Jesus: "Teach me how to trust in You completely." For if we do not know, what else can we do besides ask? Ask, and ask with confidence, because He will answer. He will form that awareness, that simplicity, that spiritual childhood within us.
Trust
Jesus, I trust in You
even in the turmoil of this night:
O let me feel in its wild winds
the breath of Your eternal lips
enlivening, expanding,
spiriting dull flecks of my ashy ground
into form, flesh, body
of my New Eden everlasting.
For it is You who speak me,
You who call me by name in each moment,
You who penetrate
the spaces within me that I do not know,
the moments of me
not yet birthed by time,
nor conceived in the tiny gaps and crevices of my mind,
nor even beginning to trace dim shadows
before my near-blind eyes.
It is You who see me.
You who grasp my hand and guide me
in the valley of shadows.
For You have taken every hollow trench
and scaled every slope,
to stand in the fiery sun that has burned me.
You have won the victory
that You proclaim and celebrate each moment,
each day,
when You call my name,
when You call me to awaken
to the frail pieces of light
and gray dust of earth’s every morning.
Save me!
For only You know me.
Shut my eyes and stop my ears
from phantom shades who cry out:
“your name is slave,
your name is fear,
blackness is your life.”
Jesus
You call my name.
O open my ear that I may hear Your voice,
clear.
For You carry, whole, within Your Living Light,
the only “me” that will ever glimmer and shine—
pool of light,
like splendid diamond
clean and cut
with the lines of Your Face.
My real name:
sounding like song, and gushing—
fresh, cold, sweet water of life,
that rises up from the deep
deep well
of Mercy’s hidden spring.
You call me by a name never spoken before
and never to be uttered again.
Let me live, O Lord, by faith—near blind, near deaf,
straining the ear of earth to hear the echo of my name
in gifted speech of hinted truth,
though shallow like shells:
Child, Beloved, Likeness, Your Glory
Your Glory.
Lead me,
by the Glory that slips between the crack
of faith’s eye,
to trust in You,
to spy the promise of all made new.
Grant me that glimpse,
faint,
firm,
of all earth’s pain and weight.
Of my fighting, faltering,
fumbling heart’s hope
washed in White Wonder.
from Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy
[click HERE to order; hard copy or Kindle available]