Being Ephemeral
(First, please excuse the chaotic, inconsistent text formatting on this blog. It's blogger, not me. I have no idea how to control it. Maybe I should have gone farther than MySpace level HTML...)
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| Jack-in-the-pulpit papercut, 2021 |
Today I am reading from the Holy Saturday texts in the Revised Common Lectionary. The first reading is Job 14:1-14 (which ends with "I would wait until my release should come."). I read through to the end of the chapter. It's very moving, expressing hope and despair over questions of mortality, rebirth, pain and suffering, and longing for God. Exactly right for Holy Saturday, that dark period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
comes up like a flower and withers,
flees like a shadow and does not last.
Do you fix your eyes on such a one?
Do you bring me into judgment with you?
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
No one can.
Since their days are determined,
and the number of their months is known to you,
and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass,
look away from them, and desist,
that they may enjoy, like laborers, their days.
“For there is hope for a tree,
if it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
and that its shoots will not cease.
Though its root grows old in the earth,
and its stump dies in the ground,
yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put forth branches like a young plant.
But mortals die, and are laid low;
humans expire, and where are they?
As waters fail from a lake,
and a river wastes away and dries up,
so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
or be roused out of their sleep.
O that you would hide me in Sheol,
that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
If mortals die, will they live again?
All the days of my service I would wait
until my release should come.
You would call, and I would answer you;
you would long for the work of your hands.
For then you would not number my steps,
you would not keep watch over my sin;
my transgression would be sealed up in a bag,
and you would cover over my iniquity.
“But the mountain falls and crumbles away,
and the rock is removed from its place;
the waters wear away the stones;
the torrents wash away the soil of the earth;
so you destroy the hope of mortals.
You prevail forever against them, and they pass away;
you change their countenance, and send them away.
Their children come to honor, and they do not know it;
they are brought low, and it goes unnoticed.
They feel only the pain of their own bodies,
and mourn only for themselves.”
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| unfinished hepatica leaves, 2022 |
This text reminded me of this Rainier Maria Rilke poem that I have printed out and taped to the wall in my studio.
Being Ephemeral
Does Time, as it passes, really destroy?
It may rip the fortress from its rock;
but can this heart, that belongs to God,
be torn from Him by circumstances?
Are we as fearfully fragile
as Fate would have us believe?
Can we ever be severed
from childhood’s deep promise?
Ah, the knowledge of impermanence
that haunts our days
is their very fragrance.
We in our striving think we should last forever,
but could we be used by the Divine
if we were not ephemeral?
— Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 27
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| Bloodroot papercut, 2022 |
One more thing, a quote from the book, Material* by Nick Kary, which I've been reading: "Is it not the tree, but the forest floor that is ancient? An individual tree is a three-dimensional projection of hidden earth rooting, of interconnection and communication. The life within the forest is much more than the cumulative value of the trees themselves. They will regrow, and those that fall or are felled can contribute to the life of the whole[...]."
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