Orthodoxy: I am a little church

Friday, December 11, 2009

I am a little church

I am a little church (no great cathedral)

far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities

-I do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,

I am not sorry when sun and rain make April

My life is the life of the reaper and the sower;

My prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving

(finding and losing and laughing and crying)

children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

Around me surges a miracle of unceasing

Birth and glory and death and resurrection;

over my sleeping self float flaming symbols

of hope, and I wake to a perfect patience of mountains

I am a little church

(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)

at peace with nature

-I do not worry if longer nights grow longest;

I am not sorry

when silence becomes singing winter by spring,

I lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him

Whose only now is forever;

standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence

(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

Orthodoxy