If each day falls
inside each night,
there exists a well
where clarity is imprisoned.
We need to sit on the rim
of the well of darkness
and fish for fallen light
with patience.
Pablo Neruda
(trans. William O’Daly)
When I first read this poem it was the image of the well which resonated strongly, but increasingly I was struck by the mysterious intermingling of light and dark which the poet captures so beautifully in the image of the well. It is such a seemingly simple metaphor, but my mind spins with the possibilities it conjures.
I understand God is that place where the light and dark meet; though of course God is neither lightness nor darkness. God is the One in whom light ‘falls inside’ dark and dark ‘falls inside’ light in a mystical, eternal, melding movement.
Clarity might seem as if it is lost, but I wait for the revelation to come, because being the One who is revealed is who God loves to be.
Christmas is a feast which similarly ‘falls into itself’ as it telescopes and expands my ideas of Time. It is the feast which celebrates the fact that Christ was born - God came to earth as human flesh - two thousand odd years ago. At the same moment it is a feast which celebrates the fact that I know that Jesus the Christ is with me now, a fact I mark as Jesus being ‘born again’ on December 25th. Yet, still in the same moment, it is also a feast which celebrates the fact that I believe that Christ will come again, making heaven and earth anew.
As I wait for God’s saving - for God’s transfiguring power - I know, in exactly the same moment as I wait, that the transfiguration God longs to perform in me, has already happened, is happening now, and will happen again.
The time-out-of-Time God is the Time-and-again God, and I rejoice in that fact.
You keep us waiting.
You, the God of all time,
want us to wait for the right time
in which to discover who we are,
where we are to go,
who will be with us, and what we must do.
So thank you… for the waiting time.
You keep us looking.
You, the God of all space,
want us to look in the right and wrong places
for signs of hope,
for people who are hopeless,
for visions of a better world which will appear
among the disappointments of the world we know.
So thank you… for the looking time.
You keep us loving.
You, the God whose name is love,
want us to be like you-
to love the loveless and the unlovely and the unlovable;
to love without jealousy or design or threat;
and, most difficult of all,
to love ourselves.
So thank you… for the loving time.
And in all this,
you keep us.
Through hard questions with no easy answers;
through failing where we hoped to succeed
and making an impact when we felt we were useless;
through the patience and the dreams and the love of others;
and through Jesus Christ and the Spirit,
you keep us.
So thank you… for the keeping time,
and for now,
and for ever,
Amen.
‘A prayer for Advent’,
John Bell (Iona Community)
patience. iPhone image.
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