Tag Archives: intimacy

MARY’S DRESS

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BANK HOLIDAY weekend affords a happy extension to “left brain time.” There are always more books I want to read, more paintings I want to paint, more photographs I want to make, more writing to be done, more poems to unfold, more prayer to be celebrated, more people to share some time and stories with, more songs to be sung, more colours to be marvelled at, more silence to be revelled in – than time ordinarily allows. And that very fact is cause for thanksgiving! Life is indeed a rich tapestry. The signs of the reign, the joy of God, are all around me. And I’m immensely thankful for the connections that blogging makes possible with people all around the world.

Today’s artwork is inspired, in Eastertide, by Mary Magdalene, beloved apostle of Jesus, first witness to new life in the Resurrection, loyal provider of intimate and loving support and sustenance, someone generous, open-hearted and giving, someone who just “knew” instinctively, what Jesus’ mission on earth was about, someone released, by God’s goodness, from the kind of prison every one of us finds ourselves in from time to time.

All human persons are “bedevilled” by “Legion” the perpetually underlying and taunting belief that somehow we’re failing to make the grade, we’re unlovable, bigger and better “failures” than anyone else, destined to be “alone”, faithless, heartbroken, misunderstood, wretched. All human persons yearn for the kind of release that Jesus’ love and acceptance brought about in Mary’s life; for the kind of release that she brought about in his.

Mary Magdalene: someone cruelly maligned and abused by religious patriarchy and misogyny across the centuries, but all the while someone I’ve admired and looked to as an icon of life’s richness and fullness, of life’s goodness and generosity, of life’s being – under the vivifying reign of God – a beautifully, colourfully, gorgeously dressed dance with our Creator.

Sydney Carter described Jesus as The Lord of the Dance. In my heart I think of Mary of Magdala as Jesus’ dance-partner and she is clothed, dressed, like the environment all around and about her, in colour and glory. And theirs is a partnership, theirs is a dance that, far from being exclusive and excluding, invites you and I to join. “Shall we dance?”, Mary asks. “And shall we sing?”, asks the Lord of the Dance. And sometimes the colours blur a little in the swirling. And sometimes they’re blended by our tears …

Have you seen the wonder of it? Have you seen Mary’s dress?

GIFTS FROM MY BREAST

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A HANDWRITTEN CARD found amongst the papers of the late poet Sally Purcell bears the following anonymous and unsourced quotation:

… Y sobre todo tendras
los regalos de mi pecho,
las finezas de mi amor,
la verdad de mi deseo …

a translation of which is

… And above all you have
gifts from my breast,
the subtleties of my love,
the truth of my desire

the Epigraph in Sally Purcell’s Collected Poems

It’s possible, sometimes, to fall especially for anonymous poetry. The world’s sacred scriptures are full of it. Our ancient forebears believed that poetry (from the Greek for “to make”) carried the Word of the un-nameable maker, the breath, the creativity, the encouragement, the enthusiasm (the from-God-ness), the feeding, the fire, the grace, the glory, the hearing, the hope, the knowing, the order, the passion, the seeing, the voice, the will, the work and the yearning of the divine. So, for me, with this little Epigraph. And I wonder whether it is the very key to Sally Purcell’s life and poetry. And I wonder, too, whether I’m so attracted to it because it holds a key to what I want to be mine.

Writing for The Times of 19 November 2002, Libby Purves remembered her friend: “like Spender’s archetypal poet she was born of the sun, walked a short while towards the sun, and left the vivid air signed with her honour.” Ah! – notwithstanding my many frailties and failures I’dd nonetheless like to think that a beloved friend, some day remembering my life, might be able to say such a thing of mine. The home and the love we all long for will surely be the place where all the vivid air is signed with honour, God’s honour, your honour, and mine.

Here in this exquisite Epigraph is a hint of that Kingdom come, here, today, in us, on earth, in our breasts, in our souls, in our most intimate known and knowing depths, as it is in heaven. It’s an extra-ordinary sort of a love that tells someone that they have “gifts from my breast”. There’s warm and life-sustaining intimacy in the message that another has some understanding of “the subtleties of my love”. An achingly beautiful reaching and being reached in “the truth of my desire”. I think of “the disciple Jesus loved” at rest upon his breast. And inwardly, perhaps more intimately than outwardly, our poetry creates in the same wonderfully incarnate way as did His.

Caught up into one, in the One, because “You, You only, exist”, we hear, in our most beloved voices, an all-encompassing, life-giving and eternal Voice say

After Amairgen

I am the quiet fruit in your hand
I am the green weed that sways in the current
I am the dark red wrack
That clings to the oceans floor below all tides
I am shell or fossil that can strip no further
I am driftwood after its voyaging
I am the sunlight flickering on these pages
Who but I knows the exchange of sea and shore ?

Sally Purcell

And so we smile. Warmed inside. We pray.

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Fuerteventura, Spain

PROFOUND SIMPLICITY

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TODAY I MET ANOTHER MEMBER of my family: the human family that is. And incidentally we share the same family name, together with a love for retreat houses and what goes on within them, and Pat’s forthcoming visit to Glenfall House brings joy to my heart as I recall the depths (the highs and the lows) of a long silent retreat there many years ago … blessed a thousandfold by the gifts that flowed fresh from a wonderful herb-garden, a glorious kitchen, and fluted white china coffee pots at breakfast! And from the silence itself? – an extraordinary intimacy with fellow retreatants with whom one had hardly spoken more than a few words. A knowing that lies beyond language. A faith possessed of what Pat was to come to call Profound Simplicity. It’s a lovely thought that we may meet someday at Glenfall House. But until then we’ll meet and know in the silence, and in my returning to her glorious, knowing, praying poetry. Thanks Pat Marsh … and to all the beloved people who know me, and allow me to know them, in simplicity’s silences.

Profound Simplicity
as simple
as washing one another’s feet

Lord, forgive us
when we make discipleship
difficult

that was never
how you taught it

when I search your gospel teachings
I discover nothing more
and nothing less
than great simplicity

a basin and a towel
bread and wine
a simple touch
a word of forgiveness
a rhythm of prayer

take nothing for the journey

a grain of wheat
a mustard seed
the profound simplicity
of love

as simple
as washing another’s feet

forgive us
when we complicate discipleship
help us instead
to simply serve
out of your great love
and our
naked vulnerability

Pat Marsh

via By the Grace of God: Profound Simplicity.