Up-end the stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk
Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly
And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,
Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
The glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Up-end the stick again. What happens next
Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, and thousand times before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires
Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.
‘The Rain Stick’
Seamus Heaney
Heaney is a master at describing the possibility of transfiguration, what might happen if I pay attention to what appears to be an ordinary moment.
One such ordinary moment provided today’s image. In early January I was leaving Swanage, a small seaside town on the south coast. Driving past the pier I noticed a derelict building opposite with large murals painted over it. This was the old pierhead cafe in a building that had been built by troops stationed in Swanage at the end of the World War II as a temporary mess hall. One of the murals depicts soldiers eating there, the other shows the ruin of the building disintegrating further. The murals are part of the town’s campaign to restore the building.
But what caught my eye was the ironic message printed below one of the murals: ‘This is a photo opportunity’.
That invitation has repeatedly returned to my mind in the last few months. I know that I believe that in the midst of ruins, new life can be created and expressed. What appears crumbling, empty and useless can be transfigured into a place where I might worship with a camera in my hand.
I was, and am daily, being invited to worship the Creator Artist God in the places which others overlook, where they forget to look, or look away from.
Such worship might become action & contemplation in one offering.
This is the invitation of the Resurrection to me this Easter:
Will I take this opportunity to worship in wonder?
Will I take this opportunity to open my eyes to see that the extraordinary is already present in the ordinary moments of my life?
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day
upon the earth.
And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall
I see God. (Job 19:25-26)
For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that
sleep. (I Corinthians 15:20)
‘I know that my redeemer liveth’ from ‘The Messiah’, George Frederic Handel
worship & wonder. (iPhone image)
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