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Advent’s Form, by Charlotte Ostermann
(listen to this poem here)
Advent lies prone beneath a flurry
not of snow, but of life’s tiny fragments rained.
Tinseled trifles fighting emptiness,
filling darkness – quick extinguished flames.
Advent’s Form is flat, dimensionless.
But wait! The Form inhales to music
not of stars, but of a voice calling, Wake!
Rise now, shake off glitter, shed your tomb.
Seek the world’s deep pain, with roots partake.
Advent’s Form now figured with a womb.
Caressed, the new-fleshed soul, by warm light
not of dawn, but of a dawning human soul.
Ponder all creation in one word.
Turn full-knowing inward, Christ extol!
Advent’s Form the vessel of her Lord.
Rejoice! A low place fills with riches
not of gold, but of promised fulfillment near.
Person glorified, renewed creation.
Outward pours such sounds as lovers hear.
Advent’s Form a throne for heaven’s son.
She turns in splendor, jewels pour from her
not her own, but from her Love’s impassioned plea.
Long, prolong, oh soul, in patience mild.
Yearn, hold fast, retain capacity.
Advent’s Form a woman waits with Child.
I want to learn, in depth, a thousand subjects I haven’t had time or the prerequisites to learn here on earth. Among them: physics, astronomy, and calculus. You may say these will no longer be needed in the afterlife, but I take it as absolute fact that they are each the tips of the icebergs of much greater super-realities that will be fulfilled in the New Heavens and New Earth.
I want the whole story. I expect I’ll need eternity to connect all the dots of stories that led to and influenced and affected my own narrative. I’ll trace my geneology back and forth from Adam to my greatest-grandchildren and hear all the ‘family stories’. I’ll have to hear them over and over again – each time realizing new interconnections between them, new layers of God’s Providential weaving of His own story through ours. I will finally have access to the whole, unabridged narrative of history and the ‘time’ and capacity to appropriate it. Whoop!
Speaking of stories, I feel confident that the best will live on, somehow, in a heavenly library where I may finally indulge in Great Books to my heart’s content. I’ll be glad there’s finally ‘time’ to have learned French and Italian, so as to be able to read originals in those beautiful languages.
I will continue to encounter people as I seek instruction, comradery, history, etc… I am assured by Fr. Arminjon (in The End of the Present World) that my intuition about Heaven was correct: I should be able to be present to whoever I intend to seek out, without needing an airplane or GPS system, or phone directory. Somehow, my desire, my intention, my imagination will help direct my steps and my physical being.
I’m cultivating that being-with-you-in-Spirit now as I pray the Divine Mercy chaplet and zip prayerfully all over the world helping direct the flow of healing Love. Some of the introductions I look forward to: G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Simone Weil, Stratford Caldecott (we never did meet in person), St. Gianna Molla, Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity, St. Elizabeth Seton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Antoni Gaudi, St. Francis, St. Afra, and on, and on, and on!
I expect all the secrets of Sacred Geometry will finally be revealed. All the saints and I will laugh together at my little Holy Geometry Project as we all laugh now at my grandchild’s scribbled suggestion of a ‘dinosaur’. I really look forward to long discussions with Adrienne von Speyr about the numerical correspondences revealed to her in visions, and with Pythagoras about the geometrical voice of God. Perhaps Euler will finally be able to explain his ‘identity’. Just so you’ll come to class when you get to Heaven, here’s Alex Bellos ‘explaining’ it just enough to whet your appetite:
The equation is mind-blowing. It cleanly unites the five most important numbers in math: 1, the first counting number; 0, the abstraction of nothing; pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter; e, the exponential constant; and i, the square root of minus one. Each number emerged from a different area of inquiry, yet they unite with perfection. You couldn’t have predicted a more immaculate synthesis of mathematical thought. Beauty in mathematics is about elegance of expression and making unexpected connections. No other equation is as concise or as deep. (The Grapes of Math, pg. 179)
I anticipate my new-body physical powers with great joy. Through the New Earth I shall run barefoot and smiling like the hardiest Tarahumara, dive as deep as the most capable (and crazy?) free diver, jump and dance and climb and swim with glorious freedom. I expect angels to escort me through the planetary wonders and animals to escort me through earth, sea and sky.
How ever will I choose between all that delight and the delight of singing around the throne of God? I imagine there will be many times, as there are now, when I simply lift off and rise toward that throne on the basis of some wonderful encounter below with earth-bound goodness, truth, or beauty. Movement back down to the New Earth from that contemplation and worship should, I guess, be assisted by the gravitas of yearning-back-toward form that real worship cultivates. I want to trace the ladder of proportions back and forth for eternity from the macrocosmos of the New Heaven to the microcosmos of the lowest created forms.
I can’t even conceive of being bored in an afterlife so wonderful. Even if I must first spend some time undergoing purgation, I will have the joy of knowing God is preparing me to receive these gifts and more. I am not sure how much my temporal life generates and limits my capacity for all the possibilities of eternity, but I know that practicing freedom, aiming for holiness, receiving the Sacraments, and Sabbath-keeping are expanding that capacity to participate in God’s super-reality even during the experience of space-time. Whatever I imagine, He will do more, so I return from imagining to live ‘real life’ refreshed and ready for the temporal adventures that are sufficient to occupy me in the meantime.
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In “Stour Valley and Dedham Church” Constable has painted the Vale of Dedham – a familiar and beloved area of his native England.
“The Merry Drinker,” by Frans Hals This is a portrait of an unnamed man, called in the title only ‘a merry drinker’.
Giotto’s painting, The Wedding Feast at Cana, portrays the literal and spiritual senses of this story.
Berlinghieri’s St. Francis appears behind the altar of San Francesco in Pescia, Italy. It is an excellent example of art ordered to divine worship.
A mom is the caretaker of a huge, wonderful, potentially beautiful, critically important place! She, herself, this actual, unique person, is the single most important ‘environment’ in the lives of her children. Like Mary, like the Church, she is an atmosphere. She is an atmosphere of affection. This is not just warm, fuzzy feelings, but […]
This is my most-requested audio – about how we can educate our children well, despite our own inadequacies. The Problem – We must get kids from where they are, to where they need to be; from ‘uneducated’ to ‘educated’. Given the poverty of our own education, we feel asked to do the impossible: build a […]
I once asked a friend who calls herself a Jewish-Catholic if it had been hard for her to accept Mary’s role in Salvation History. She laughed and said, “Heck no! Every Sabbath was begun by a Jewish mama’s prayers! I’d have been suspicious if Lord Sabbaoth hadn’t come through a woman.” Jewish women welcomed Sabbath […]
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