Two-Thousand Years: A Poem in Prose

A meditation on desire transfigured by faith. 

“I saw in His hands what looked like a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart… The pain was so great that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.”
(The Life of St. Teresa, 29.13)

I 

You are in me, before me, above me, below me… and yet no longer near enough. I wait in your locked garden you had prepared for me, whilst musing with delicate joy on your promise that you will one day return.

There have been more than a few moments when despair has threatened me-- my body seized with pain, and my heart freshly pierced with sorrow thinking of how much life could still be spent with you, but instead the hours, the days, the weeks go by; and while the tears are no longer relentless, they are still ready to pounce from any corner. Your absence leaves me without breath, without rest, and only enough resolve to live as I believe you would wish. Oh Love, awakened before its time.

I look at the picture of your face in my mind only as sparingly as I might, so that the balm it provides will not be diminished in those future times its powers will assuredly be so sorely needed. I'm exhausted from the waters that churn and beat inside my tired breast, begging for some small hole to erode in the dam I've used to try to keep it at bay. And yet, in the next moment I remember your voice, your eyes, or any those times we were together, and my heart is lifted for a moment with invisible hands, gently soothing your Bride, with some blissful moments far away from her current reality.

Those hours that pass with wondering if you look upon me and reach for me, too, are battled by those times where I am sure that you do, but I do not wish you to feel as I feel. Not when so much of my love goes with you... Ah, but if only I, too, could go with you.

And even still, I also fight to keep myself from the soothing delusions or hope that each new day will be the last that I wait to be delivered from such a wait. Be assured, though, dear heart, that for you I will be patient, even as the glow of moonlight should claim the fleece of your lamb.

I hide myself so that only you might find me, knowing that one day I will again touch your face, and perchance to kiss your mouth, and become drunk-- for your love is more delightful than wine. Ah, to once again become lost in your scent, safe in your arms, feeling your skin warm against mine. To know such tenderness and love as I have never had, except from you. Cursed are those arms and gazes of lesser men. 

No longer do I put my faith elsewhere, because it is only You who will not disappoint me. But for now... for now I have no choice but to hold onto what I have seen, even as I cannot touch… You were the best of men, and the only sorrow you've ever caused me is that I must wait to be your woman. Oh Love, awakened before its time.

*     *     *

How could someone know you, and not love you as I do? How could they have done, what they have done to you? And all for my sake...

Because of your love I am made strong as I have given you my weakness. I feel safe, sure, and I sleep easily through the storms. Though God's Kingdom is the harbour, you are the light that guides me there… just as assuredly as it was our Father that gave you to me, so that we two could have such a taste of His kingdom here on Earth. For this I am truly, endlessly grateful, as much as I am unworthy, and wretched in my grieving.

Know that because of you, I can look back and forward to at least one good thing that has happened, and will happen; and whenever the specters of despair knock, I know I am shaded still by your banner over me. 

I cannot promise that I will be happy, but I can promise that She whom you know, love, and cared for will keep walking with her head as high as she can— for your sake, even when I have forgotten to do so for mine. And when you do return, you will not find my lamp lacking in oil.

 

II

I admit that since the beginning, I have known that I would ultimately be called into pain for your sake, and for this I care nothing. Even now, I regret nothing. What greater honour could I seek, except to suffer, too, for the one I love? Though it break me, I choose you still.

There is not one sleepless night, not one tear, not one pain, that will not have been worth its weight in glory. My life as much as my heart has torn in two-- defined by your advent, and what task is now before me. What I have learned of longing for our Father's dominion, His kingdom, and comforting presence, was revealed to me through your flesh. And so what mountain is high enough to scream that, "Yes, I love you! Yes, I love you! I love you!”

*     *     *

Ah, my Love, do you read my scroll over my shoulder, or is your hand moving mine? It all feels so far away now, and yet it all feels so near, too… The memories.

You are the light by which I have raised my head to see the dawn, and my foolish, girlish hope is that my tiny candle may have brought, and may bring some light to you in turn. What otherwise might compel your rays to fall upon me, then, except as some reminder of my worth and unworthiness? What can I give, to one who never asks? Does not need? New feelings, new experiences, new confidence... it would only be meet. If I could, I would want to give-- to be your everything, because you... are... most assuredly mine.

 *     *     *

Days pass, as they always do, and as yet another evening falls, and my resolve weakens in the dark, know that my thoughts are drawn again to none but you.

…How I wish to see you, heart of my own heart.

I fight my own yearning for some sign or word to let me know that I still have a place in your thoughts. Every day I imagine some knock on my door, made by your own beautiful hand. 

Please... do not forget me.

  *     *     *

Ah… Now my sorrow resurfaces...

I remember that final day where you put out your shaking hand to me, resolved and somehow as helpless as I; blushing from repressed emotion. Despite the rock below my feet, I could not but be shattered upon it. And what could I possibly have said? And what could I possibly have done? I was suddenly… only afraid of what I wanted to do.

You asked me if there was anything you could do to ease my pain, but there was simply nothing righteousness would let me ask of you. And so, we two only trembled before the cup before us... not that of comfort and abandon, for which we both burned, but it was forbidden  to drink.

And even still I... please forgive me. 

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

  

III 

I am feeling rather unwell today… a captive of my bed. And so despite my best efforts to escape from my daily fixations about where you might possibly be, I think instead upon your presence, your calm, the safety within which I might instead revive, imagining that more adventures with you await me when I arise.

Oh, to be that luckiest woman; to sleep, to dream, and when I wake, be satisfied by seeing your likeness... while yet I know that it will not be on this side of Heaven. I secretly wonder how much of my illness is related to my grief, and how long it will have to last… to die would be to gain.

Years-- years, my Love, of dreaming of you, pining, wishing and longing… though you know all I do in secret. And now I exist in two worlds— one where the summer heat, the sun on the leaves, and warm winds blow happily around me, filling me with awe over the steady march of time… and the other… a February of the heart. It's so cold here, and empty, as the many chambers in my heart yearn for their carpenter.

Surely these yearnings already give me a taste of a private hell, from which the key is still too precious and dear for me to let go of, but willfully I lock myself in. 

*     *     *

Now that what I'd most feared has befallen me, the tears come and go as they please. Sometimes, I admit, it is between smiles and outbursts of laughter when I remember, or my mind wanders to the joy that was, or could be, if you were to be here. At night, I dream of these things and much more, but wake up shaking from the shock of returned consciousness, and the restraint it takes to keep myself from calling out to you... again. In the day, your love carries me still, for surely it is not my own feet that will it.

Last night, I dreamt of looking into your eyes and losing myself again, so completely. Would that I might embrace and caress you, or hold you in our sorrows to my breast. Ah, to rest my lonely heart by your ear, so that you could hear how it beats only for you. That you might know fully the way it leapt when I saw you, or heard you call me by name… But not beating that wakes me up at night when my thoughts of you are relentless. The beating that keeps me alive even in your absence… despite…

But, my Love, forgive my melodrama... I came here to let it all out, or else I would have no respite.

This morning when I woke up to my fresh hell I did my usual stretch, in obedience that I carry on, and hoped that morning might bring me word of your unfailing love. And for a short moment the fog of melancholy seemed cleared, on account of the bittersweet assurance that the pain I carry is still, in some way, your shadow… and then I saw for a moment with clarity that my pain blinds me to the good in my life that you still usher me toward. You've taught me the greatest things I will ever learn, gave me things I could never have had vision enough to wish for, and healed wounds so deep that now I may speak truly from the bottom of my heart-- well… I know that you know. But how I wish with so much of my soul that I could call your name with my own voice, and yet have your face turn and shine upon me as it once did.  Oh, grace upon grace!

 

IV

I love you such that I wish those words rid from my vocabulary for anything else.

And yet, could there be something more apt? I adore you. I miss you. You are my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night.

You are my greatest joy, my light; and my pain, and my darkness... is your absence. But the only proof of my love to you is my absence, because it is all I can do to walk as you would have me continue to do. I hope that you know and feel that. But of course you do... Our paths have been shown to us for this uncertain length of road, and we have chosen them with best intentions, while it is you who have carried the heaviest consequence. I don't have to wish to know if it is the correct choice— in this, at least, I am not tortured. And I know that despite what is now, that we once enjoyed the same air is the greatest gift… and for this I am thankful. 

Ah, such a portion…

But how long now, O Lord?

 

In the core of my being, in the garden of my heart, where I can plant and weed as desired, the great roots of your tree are ever venerated, watered, and tended, while the great branches of such a central feature provide shade to the meadow, home for the birds, and a tethered point for my swing. Let me, in this way at least, remain as a child in your arms, until the old has gone, and the new has come.

*     *     *

It is good that I do not have any who shares my bed or looks upon me as I sleep, because I often wake myself up in the morning or evening twilight by calling out your name; and I wonder, do you hear me?

Of course you do... And yet I hear no reply.

*     *     *

I love thinking about making and sharing food again, and throughout the day sharing any number of things; as long as you're there, nothing else would matter. Teach me again, Rabboni-- any lesson. Tell me another story-- no matter how small, no matter how I already know the ending. Let me hear your voice as I sit and listen, or do any daily task; share my life, yoke to me and let me rejoice in any work, one day at a time, forever. Play with me. Imagine with me. Let us create and explore, and then do it again. Be mine, and make me yours-- for my heart is bound to Your name; and let us not give it a second thought, except to thank God, again and again, for our immeasurable blessing.

 

V

It was never so that women should have to bear these things. Above all earthly things, every hour, every day... and yet my feelings continue to mean nothing in the face of... the law, and righteousness, that we both held and hold dear.

Inside of me, at least, the rivers of my love pour freely, and like a sweet brook and refreshing lakes hidden in the wood, there has become seated a new feeling— at first I wondered at it, as if some foreign body rattled in me and scraped my core being, inside the raw heart that cannot heal— of some pearl of warm scarlet that sits at the center of it all. This gem, the child of immense pressure, not unlike a diamond, sits enthroned in me, safe and deep in me, and gives me strength. Such radiance it has that the mere thought of it makes me suddenly awash with near bliss. The power to be who I need to be, the power to love you even in your absence and my sickness, the power of self-discipline in the face of nearly any other inferior temptation... a gift from God, in His mercy.

One day, I imagine running blissfully into your arms and being made one. I imagine whispering to you in my joy and relief, and daring to breathe again. I feel myself buckle under the pressure of the inadequacy of the truth of the utterance, "I missed you." And the crying, the cathartic floodgates... the weak clay vessel finally broken. As our time together has been made even more precious by the current scarcity, only ugly tears would suffice. And at first I think, “what a waste of a moment of joy!” But what is a moment, then, when eternity waits?

 

VI

Beloved, human kingdoms and empires have risen and fallen, since my heart was barely new when it was torn from me, and the deluge of blood and tears whisked relentlessly to the gap between us.

I am sure that you are at peace, in your righteousness, and it is merely a sign of my own weakness that I cannot say the same. But I have not come here to further bemoan my having been removed from the sum of my greatest love… though such a state continues. No, I have come to let you know that in my waiting I have learned that there is still love and joy on the other side of pain. Indeed, I have come to sing praises for all I am now, even in your absence, for you see: though my heart is still broken, I still rejoice that it is broken over you. One day when I see you again, all will be made the sweeter, and the past and present a bad dream.

Oh Love... besides all of my other prayers, both sinful and righteous, it is a cherished hope of mine that you see or know these thoughts.

  *     *     *

Though as yet unclaimed, I am like a widow; and though God's child, I am an orphan. Every unfulfilled desire, my Love, I know you would fulfill, if it were not God's will that such glory be forestalled until the appointed time.

The devil that would take away my faith in your return, at least, no longer dogs me, so that I might embrace the care of the Spirit, into whose arms you have long released me. Ah, this love that swells, but cannot bloom!

To the words you and I have yet to hear from each other, the touches that have yet to warm us… To these things, I give silent vigil at every sight of beauty, every pleasant aroma, every morning, and every musical sound, for each is only visible to me because of you-- the most perfect creation God has blessed the world with.

In these laments, raw as they are, I don't think I've given thanks enough. But as I live, as I care for others, so will our love, too, be commended one day back into the hands of Eternity.

*     *     *

In your absence it is this Spirit and I, alone, as I endure this life of solitary wanderings, and endure echoes of lesser loves and lesser beauties, which sicken my soul which once beheld perfection. However, if I can spread anything close to the heaven on Earth that I knew in you, while I wander, the world will be blessed indeed.

*     *     *

Many of the reflections I have made have been lost to time, now, but I would only have been embarrassed over their repetitive nature. My heart is simple in its yearning to hear confirmed what we both already know-- how long I have pressed my hand to the wall at night to imagine your hand pressed the same on the other side.

VII

Another life has passed, my love, and my heart still bleeds. Love still flows there for you like a river fed by the sweetest springs that I alone can drink from, and sometimes only to escape drowning. Our time must be coming soon. I feel it. I know that on some level my heart is asking-- begging-- a miracle only You could deliver. You, who have witnessed, incited, and dried my every tear. Only You.

I have asked, I have prayed. I have begged and wept, but I have nothing I can imagine I might offer to coax you to a merciful reappearance, but myself… and You already have that. I am helpless, until that day for which all creation keeps watch.

But not my will, but your will be done. Oh Lord...