I just read a beautiful, healing poem on Autumnrose’s blog.

**

Then I saw Karen’s rainbow pictures.

**

The Created Order as Sacrament by Henri Nouwen

“When God took on flesh in Jesus Christ, the uncreated and the created, the eternal and the temporal, the divine and the human became united. This unity meant that all that is mortal now points to the immortal, all that is finite now points to the infinite. In and through Jesus all creation has become like a splendid veil, through which the face of God is revealed to us.

This is called the sacramental quality of the created order. All that is is sacred because all that is speaks of God’s redeeming love. Seas and winds, mountains and trees, sun, moon, and stars, and all the animals and people have become sacred windows offering us glimpses of God.”

emphasis mine

**

Thoughts from Thomas Merton

“Do you want to know God? Then learn to understand the weaknesses and imperfections of [others]. But how can you understand the weaknesses of others unless you understand your own? And how can you see the meaning of your own limitations until you have received mercy from God, by which you know yourself and Him? It is not sufficient to forgive others: we must forgive them with humility and compassion. If we forgive them without humility, our forgiveness is a mockery: it presupposes that we are better than they.

We overcome the evil in the world by the charity and compassion of God, and in so doing we drive all evil out of our own hearts.“

Thomas Merton. No Man Is An Island. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1955: 163.

emphasis mine

**

Unsought Revelation

I did not ask
to know what I know,
to stand before God

Spirit-filled to the brim—
a prophetic, new voice
within me. Why am I

chosen as speaker,
whose variant words
are oftentimes

questioned? It would be
easier to believe as
others believe, to label

what I didn’t seek
but often say,
call it false tidings

not ones of racial salvation.
It is easier to argue
than to listen, easier to

hear the roar of a preacher
than an out-of-place lion,
easier to look for

revelation only from
John. It is easier still
to walk on the white,

stone path toward a country
church or store-front church
than it is to chop one’s

way through the hot, humid
jungles of Azania—
the continent from which

native churches now send
missionaries to America,
so Americans, too, can find

their way toward the Truth,
and the Light, Who is both
dark-skinned and Jesus.

**

It is a beautiful day, the day the Lord has made.  Be glad today.