Caritas

Money profits nothing.

Material possessions deceive in their promise to finally fulfill.

After becoming profiteers of this world's gold and silver,

What would you do? What would you ever do?

After the last piece of gold is spent, and all money has been squandered,

The world having deceived us and robbed us of peace,

Only God and men will remain. Charity will remain forever

Tell me the way you write poetry

Tell me the way you write poetry, and I will enter into your sentences, your words, your very letters,

And I will endeavour to tell you what lurks deep within the heart of your thoughts.

Invite me into your worldview, my friend, though I may not assent to your every opinion, for I have my own,

Show me your world and I will show you mine. I am no psychologist or philosopher to assess you or pass judgement upon you, my friend,

I am but a fellow wayfarer on the journey, a transient passerby, a flitting, fluttering, butterfly, here upon this earth for but a fleeting moment,

In short, consider me your friend for I ardently see you as mine, my brother Man and sister Woman from this family of humankind, living within the homely confines of our pleasant family home called earth,

Let me hear you speak, let me read what you write, let me listen to the rhythym of your thoughts, which I imagine cannot be anything but beautiful, flowing as they do from a soul created in imago Dei,

Let me listen to you for a thousand years, for I know myself and have heard my own thoughts echoing painfully, endlessly, within the Cathedral of my heart, and I know what I think and say and do and think,

Long, long enough have I been the center of my universe, let me learn who you are, my friend, my brother, my sister, my companion, com panis, you with whom I break my daily bread, my daily bread of the air, the water, and the love of God, upon God's good earth.

Show me your world, and I will show you mine. Invite me to your worldview, and I will say unto you, Tauchen Sie ein in meine Weltanschauung, and welcome you into my mind, my world, my worldview,

Where I desire that you hear of the love of God, of God, of the good, good God...

Stat crux dum volvitir orbis

The thrush that sat perched on the leafless tree in winter,

The thrush that roamed the bare branches, casting out everything unnecessary with minimalistic delight,

The thrush that renounced worldly desire with monastic calm and Carthusian fervour,

Chirped loudly and longly variegated songs,

Quickly dismissive of all that is not of God.

The world turns and turns, and everywhere the sad story is one and the same,

The wait for the fulfillment of a human desire,

And the realization after the fulfillment that the heart is still restless and hungry.

Know this: what money and material possessions cannot give you, God can.

"Stat crux dum volvitir orbis."

The world revolves, while the Cross stands still.

Only God is changeless. 

Live light and simply and your death will be beautiful, my friend

And behold, Spring is nigh:

Wait till it blossoms,

And you will see God's truth, beauty and goodness

Leading you back home to heaven

Time Before and After

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight

Even while the dust moves

There rises the hidden laughter

Of children in the foliage

Quick now, here, now, always —

Ridiculous the waste sad time

Stretching before and after.

- Burnt Norton, Part 1 of Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot 

I contemplate the vast stretch of time, 

Stretching infinitely into timelessness, before and after

He is the Word, and "He existed before me".

I myself was born into this world merely a few years ago,

While He watched me awaken into consciousness of this world,

(Who knows if I had ever been conscious in heaven, 

When I was but a thought in the mind of God)

And He watched me learn about Him,

And learn to love Him.

And here at the present moment, in the twenty-first century,

I idly wonder, if after all of this, my words will have the poignant look

Of words that had never been read.

I write all these thoughts to you, O Word,

And in writing to you, you free me from that fear

Of being forgotten forever by all but you

Time moves on relentlessly in its inexorable march towards eternity:

In a hundred years I will not be around anymore

In a thousand years none of this will ever matter,

(Houses, careers, money, achievements)

Except the Word and the love we bore for Him

And our brethren

And I amidst this vast stretch of time, 

Stretching infinitely into timelessness, before and after

You walked me through the pastures green

While the world sang its illusory anthem aloud,

Christ led me by the hand

(You led me by the hand)

You walked me through the pastures green,

Among the white lilies and spotless circular roses.

In the silence, in the solitude -

When I am alone with You,

Your eyes light up everything, every everything,

You are who I need -

In the stillness, Christ quiets my searching soul -

And Christ whispered unto my heart

I will lead you by the hand

I will show you what life is

O You are all I ever need, Love

You walked me through the pastures green

You were my muse before I met You

You were my muse before I met You.

I prayed for Your visitation before I knew You.

Like a single eye watching from the setting sky,

The sun watches me - dost Thou watch me too?

Photographed sunsets nauseate me, make me seasick.

Give it to me real, give me reality, 

For I abhor the lesser beauty of reality when photographed.

I desire not the sign that points, but what it points to.

Memory of myself and not of Thee, nor for Thee.

O selfish motive of the self, dwindling in the light of the dying sun.

Words began to be more important to me, and I lost my grip on reality,

And perchance on charity as well -

Stuck at the top of this Ferris wheel of life,

I search nostalgically for the horizon which is now obstructed 

By the modern monoliths of brick and glass.

Here lies a poem written in blood and pain.

Mere jots and thoughts on life, to fill up the empty awkward silence.

Your voice and words would be more eloquent

Waves washed onto the beach in the sunset,

Washing away the sandcastles and the names written down.

All the hard sandcastling of the day,

Gone in a single wave in the evening.

Like the snowmen you, my friend, built last winter. Melting

Only true love remains, indestructible

Stargazing

In the evening we go stargazing in the mountains.

At dawn, we stare at the sun, for only the sun

Can burn your eyes.

Then open your eyes and see.

Try cloud-watching as well, and name the clouds,

And behold the majestic shapes and forms therein.

Feel the call of nature calling you,

As if from another world untainted by sin.

Renounce everything, and cling to Christ, the Son.

Then open your eyes. See