Easter Night

Easter night, sitting 'neath a frosted light

I pen, in silence, words of the waning day

and sense the Savior's breath in the cool night air

coaxing me toward sleep and the bed that cares.

This day, bright-full  of  hallelujahs and drunk with praise

pulled my thoughts toward sin and grace.

The Resurrection is sure more than tombs swept clean

and Life's aglow with promises the future seeds.

In meditation sits the guru of my thoughts

unsure which path of quiet to pursue.

Solitude's love enfolds the cells of my flesh

and calls out, "Empty!", her sweet embrace.

For sure we must greet Death by our self

and feel the sisterly kiss of her determined lips.

In this lone-time on the Easter night

the rising of Jesus offers light.

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -A cure through love is what we all want, and this cure is promised us in the Gospel.

  -As a believer, I can all too easily fall into the trap of trying to play a clever and exciting game with myself and others, particularly if I can be "helpful"  and keep my distance at the same time.  To be helpful and to feel superior seem sometimes to enter "the best of all possible worlds."

  -What does it mean to continue believing when something is going on inside us that appears to be beyond our endurance?

That Day of Oh

Like white-lighting flashing across the ev'ning sky

that Day of Oh will whip forth from my mouth

Like hungry-eagles swooping down upon a meal

that Day of Oh will fly forth from my lips

Like sunbeam-mornings breaking fresh upon the day

that Day of Oh will shine from within my face

That Day of Oh will reveal the myst'ries weaving through my life

and hang upon the walls images laying about my soul

Then all scattered pieces  of my life's collage

will unfold and display the tapestry of my life

That Day of Oh will hail the birth of insights and wisdom

will cement the broken and scattered fragments along my path

molding a mosaic One Craftsman could have overseen

I'll be free to grasp the Darkness and harvest Awakened Light

Thoughts of Alan Jones:

-Contemplation (like art) requires of us a willingness to be transformed.

-"We either contemplate or we exploit."  We either see things and persons with reverence and awe,  and therefore treat them as genuinely other than ourselves; or, we appropriate them, and manipulate them for our own purposes.

That moment came

when words were smite

not messengers of life

So, I stopped the words

and listened to life

to hear and read

what had not been read

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -The Church is always in need of...followers of different ways of believing, whether they are prophets, contemplatives, or people with a special vocation.

  -...prophets and contemplatives need the institution, for without it they have nothing against which to rub.

  -I have great love and reverence for the institution.  In fact, the more I try to follow the way of believing that I've been describing the more I appreciate the ordinary life of the Church.  It is a question of balance.  The more I follow the apophatic way, the more I need to be nourished by the images from the Bible and from the Liturgy.

  -These images point me in the direction I wish to go, but they are not the way itself. The way is a contemplative one, which simply means looking at someone or something without absorbing them into our little world of ideas and values.  Contemplation means seeing what is there and refusing to hallucinate so that we see only what we want to see.  We then wait to receive what chooses to reveal itself (as in the Greek work aletheia, which literally means to uncover.  The truth then, is that which reveals or uncovers itself). It means being attentive to whatever and whoever is there as truly other than ourselves.  This is what is suggested by the word aesthetic, which strictly means seeing thing in such a way that the viewer is changed by what he or she sees.  Perhaps that is why artists in totalitarian countries are often locked up.  They help people see a new world through their art, and that is dangerous to the existing totalitarian political system.

tears know me

 not as cascades 

but as sighs

as moist corners

of leaking glands

yearning to scrub 

my eyes clean

clear of crusted years

of dirt-mound mem'ries

and dulled emotions

which like muzzled dogs

strain to romp and bark

with a freedom found

chiseled in the heart 

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -We have a tendency to make ideas into things, and so we're tempted to take our way of believing or our way of thinking and imagine that our way is the only right and sane one there is.  We might  add our own anathemas against those who claim that the "ideas" of Marx, Darwin, Freud, Jung and Uncle Sam have real existence!

  -...the Church easily gets seduced by the values of the prevailing culture.

  -The Church is always in need of ...followers of different ways of believing, whether they be prophets, contemplatives, or people with a special vocation.