Thursday, May 13, 2010

You're number 1!


I received this
Mother's Day card
from my oldest daughter
when she was 7 years old.
I keep it on my dresser,
not because I am a hopeless sentimental
but because of what she wrote inside…

















Now, I know what she meant! But do you see the good of it?

She is now 30 years old. I cannot mother her the way I did when she was 7, or 12, or 26, or even last year.

While I was mother from the moment her little life sparked in my womb, I am also becoming mother according to my relationship with her.

And so it is with Christ.

We belong to God from the beginning of all time, loved into existence by the one who is love; each of us and all of us a daughter of God, a son of God.

And we are becoming who we already are - according to our relationship with Him.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring;
like each tucked string tells,
each hung bell's Bow swung
finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves –
goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is - Christ –
for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.


Gerard Manley Hopkins

2 comments:

jess said...

Whoa, ok Gerard -
Had to let this one sink in for a second and then I remembered to breath and then I thought, yeah, EXACTLY!

jess said...

How do you find these poets so profound, and how lucky am I to reap the rewards of your lovely fingers' generosity - I now know what it's like to be your garden - having been tended with so much love that it can grow wild and odd and yet, when back in the hands of it's caring tender, it can still be made to feel perfect. THANK YOU