Within Christ’s complex heart and mind
Three streams emerged and joined as one:
The man who spoke with prophet’s fire
Showed mother-love and childlike fun.
Beyond all words that we can form,
Beyond all thoughts that we can share,
The message of our touch conveys
A world beyond all hate and fear.
I sing a song of the woman’s voice
Tender and strong and clear;
Of those who longed to gain the vote
Despite men’s doubt and fear;
As flesh reveals a path to sacredness,
As body, mind and spirit merge as one,
As life is lived with interweaving links,
We dance the rhythmic pulse of Moon and Sun.
Love is the source of comfort and delight;
Love shines in darkness, bringing us the light;
When we despair and purpose seems at an end
We long for love on which we can depend.
O God of all new visions
Of hope and tenderness,
The source and inspiration
Of love and friendliness,
Enable these two people
Each other to affirm
And find within their marriage
The love for which they yearn.
The life of Jesus shows a way
Of living life in love each day.
He lived with kindness, but was strong
In striking out against all wrong.
We sing of human loving’s starting point
Emerging from the Cosmos at its birth.
Repulsion and attraction both were there
Yet from the latter love evolved on Earth .
Is love a grand illusion
That comes and goes at will,
A heart that’s always longing,
A heart that’s never still?
In the wonder of love
Two people appear as one
Without absorbing the other
Each respecting intimacy and solitude.
Awaken O my inner self
Discern your Bethlehem,
Prepare to enter deep within
And wear your diadem.
THEME The Connecting Solitude
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
The spiritual desert is not a foe to be conquered but an emptiness to be affirmed: for when we are full, we perceive nothing, but when we are empty we can receive everything.
There’s no two-ness in God the mystic said, *
No two-ness in God at all.
All the things are as one in Jesus Christ, +
All things are as one said Paul.
In the letting go we find life:
For deeper than the striving is the flowing,
Deeper than the searching is the knowing
And deeper than the grieving is the mystery
In which darkness and light are one.
We believe in a mystery we call God,
A mystery beyond definition,
A flame that is glimpsed through darkened glass,
The hope of our human condition.
Not in grasping or in holding shall we find God,
Not in seeking power or serving narrow needs,
But in letting go with joyful expectation
We shall meet the God beyond all creeds.
THEME The Vision that Transforms
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
1. To see Christ in another human being is illumination. To see Christ in all human beings is transfiguration.
God is the rock of mystic presence,
Christ is the rock that points the way,
Earth is the rock that births our life-force ,
Flesh is the rock where lovers play.
