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Entropic Clarion
There is so much integrity in a God who enters so fully into the entropy of things,
Universes, macro and micro, which seem to expand and contract explosively,
Are the lot of God's creation.
Not only did the Christ make stunning proposals about the meaning of life,
He lost everything, life, friends, the comfort of an old age, reputation.
His Father seems to have lost Him.
Nor does the Holy Spirit really seem to gain any ground in getting the lot of humankind
To recognize the value of one another! She blows where She wills
But the result seems not to have been warmed to Her directives.
This entrance into entropy endears God to us.
But the secret of holiness, the very meaning of life, seems somehow hidden in a truth,
Wrapped in the enigmatic and engaging, entrapped and un-perduring
Skin of existence.
Everything withers, not only like the rose, but like God Themself,
Worn weary, weathering our storms of murderous competition.
There is holy wisdom in the eremitical project.
Opting out of the game seems a credible answer
To the horrific question posed by experience.
All things pass, nothing matters in the end, yet everything counts.
How can this be?
According to the teaching of Jesus,
We are born to give up, to give in,
To come apart at the seems,
And take up the cross which
Beckons us to union with
All emptying Godhead.
The entropic clarion begs us not to win but to lose all our drives into
this one yearning chasm, where, in the darkness, waiting for us to fall in, is God.
19 June 2006
The Apocalypse?
That Book of Revelation is full of terrifying images; it pans, scans, and describes
dreamscapes of the scapegoat, a threatened Lamb,
the Enemy enraged and empowered,
the Virgin Church quite captured in Childbirth.
Are the four-headed beasts to be taken seriously?
Are the transmogrifying cherubim and seraphim coming?
Is there a Michael and Satan fighting in the sky?
If so, How? When? Why?
Questions about the literal truth of sacred scriptures
signify a reality ensconced in self-awareness gone awry.
The gift of intelligence taken as supreme,
we become the measure of truth and promise.
How can we begin to fathom the fathomless depths of God?
Why would any presume that an answer which satisfies the mind
for elegance, clarity, security, or righteousness
could command the obeisance of all other kinds?
The horrors are here. The abominations abound.
There are fires and blood covering the ground.
Virgins remain at the feet of the cross
ready to dive into the everlasting dross of human defilement.
The holy conflict goes on in every soul
between the parts of the whole
striking blows for plenty, power, and pride
against an impossible passion to possess the holy.
Within the very heart, head, and bones of humanity
stride the beasts and cosmic conflicts of God's final book.
The Second Coming is to be born in each of us
allowing the final look in each life to see the love of God.
The Vision of John is the Dream of the young, extreme.
The hope that perseveres through the vicissitudes of self–discovery
is the perduring grace which paces the race for finality
as it demands a leap of faith
in the One Who has already been sacrificed because of His Love.
The One left standing in our dreamscape of life beyond life
is ourself fully possessed by Michael, the Power of God,
to enlighten, like Lucifer, the whole of us for Him to see.
Dennis McNally SJ
13 January 2009
First Born of the Dead
I thought of the dark blue woman holding the baby.
It was a dream, like so many, an image I need to paint.
Then Kerry died and the world fell to pieces.
Flying into the city of the sainted king
at night and with heartbroken access to the view
I was struck by the beauty in the grid of the
earth's star-crossed blanket of lights in
a city where there is abundant life.
I pray to my sister but
I grieve in emptiness.
Then, when I got to actually doing the thing,
painting the inspiration, listening to the call to work,
I made a very dark Virgin of the night,
who carried a bright light-filled Child.
Her skirt was lamp lit fields reaching off into the horizon.
Her veil became red rather than blue,
blood perhaps or hope or maybe the rich red
grace of the Holy Spirit
shrouding death's mystery
in merciful night.
She remained dark, mysterious, a moon maiden Madonna,
mother to the first born of the dead.
Dennis McNally SJ
20 April 2009
Elegy on a Century of War
So much war in the history of humankind, the mystery of elusive victory,
The baffling battle story giving evidence to that Nietzchian nightmare,
That life, in the master/slave relationship,
Is a constant conflict, wrapped in blood and death.
Yet the "Naked Ape" of Desmond Morris
Was an image I rejected, when in jeans and plaid I studied him,
Unwilling to think that humanity created godly
Could be less than essentially social,
Tool wielding, and noble,
Namers of God's handiwork.
Different from the "animal kingdom."
In class for so many years, observing adolescent acrimony, enduring abusive adult antics
in the name of "political correctness," and studying national atrocities of whole peoples,
I pray about the realities of our world, now knowing a human difference.
I paint conflicts, proclaiming the pain in the dharma of Gottama Siddhartha.
Unbridled desire has caused countless catastrophes, canceling creation's natural focus, doing damage reckless, feckless, and proud:
Wars between the sexes, battles over sexual expression,
Callous conflicts bearing dead children,
Children taught to harm and mutilate,
Victims of hatred, blowing themselves up,
Innocents raped and sodomized,
Towers terrorized,
Territories terrified,
People literally disarmed,
Churches exploding,
Temples toppling,
Races ruined.
The work of Lucifer brings darkness to the whole of creation!
It seems a mindless thing, the product of natural selection,
But it is the result of human manoeuvering,
Greed, envy, and ego
Gone mad.
Can the will of God ever hold sway over humankind?
Can kindness be kindled by any angels of light?
Will the Spirit of God triumph in the end?
Does anyone learn from this fearful existence that our demons must be brought into submission?
Islam means surrender, after all; it is one of the great insights of religious realism on earth.
Being fully human means using the mind, whose consummate character is restraint,
in league with the heart. Is there any hope that the demon could be humanized not as killer par excellence but as lover who puts behind the beloved the causes of the self,
Like Christ?
My painting of Michael delivering the broken satanic leader to the throne of Solomon on which sits the Woman clothed with the sun under the watchful gaze of the ABBA and the RUAH, her husband playing with Jesus, little Lamb of God, is a prayer, really , that in the end we be victorious over the demon within.
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