An incarnational poem for your Adventide enjoyment...

I just got home from our Lessons and Carols service (the first one ever at my new church!) and am still buzzing. ‘Twas wonderful.

One of the readings was one of the most beautiful poems I’ve ever beheld, and I wanted to share it with you here on the blog.

As you read, take note... This is not some hippy-dippy new age (not that there’s anything wrong with hippy-dippy new-agers). It was written in the 10th century (yes, the good ole days) by St. Simeon.

Do enjoy…

We Awaken In Christ’s Body

We awaken in Christ’s body, even as Christ
awakens our languishing bodies. And look!
My poor hand is Christ, the very hand of Christ.
And look! He enters my foot, and becomes
without conclusion, me.
I reach out my hand and, full of wonder, my hand
becomes Christ, becomes all of him—for he
remains indivisibly whole,
without separation from his eternal holiness.

I take one step, my foot advancing, and look!
He is revealed as a flash of lightning, there
proceeding with my lowly foot.

Do you think I blaspheme? Then open
your heart to him, and receive the one who is ever
opening to you, and opening ever so deeply.

If we love him as we say, we wake up
in his body, even here, where our own bodies,
entire, every lash and atom, the honored and the
dishonored, are realized as his, are realized as him.

And look! He makes us—at long last—utterly real,
and everything that is hurt, all that has appeared
to us as dark, as broken, diseased, shameful, ugly, irreparably torn
is in him transfigured, and is revealed as whole,
lovely, illumined with and by and in his light.

And look, we rise from our long sleep,
bearing the beloved with our every step.

In Joy,
Jonas+