Brian’s Reflection: Monday, April 23, 2007


The Vision of the Archangels

Slowly up silent peaks, the white edge of the world,
Trod four archangels, clear against the unheeding sky,
Bearing, with quiet even steps, and great wings furled,
A little dingy coffin; where a child must lie,
It was so tiny. (Yet, you had fancied, God could never
Have bidden a child turn from the spring and the sunlight,
And shut him in that lonely shell, to drop for ever
Into the emptiness and silence, into the night. . . .)
They then from the sheer summit cast, and watched it fall,
Through unknown glooms, that frail black coffin -- - and therein
God's little pitiful Body lying, worn and thin,
And curled up like some crumpled, lonely flower-petal -- -
Till it was no more visible; then turned again
With sorrowful quiet faces downward to the plain.

- Rupert Brooke, English poet, who died on this day, 1915,
on a ship in the Greek isles



I can never resist quoting Rupert Brooke. While I was wandering the Greek isles in ’89, sandals, shorts, a t-shirt or two stuffed in a backpack with the bare other necessities, I did not, alas, know of Rupert Brooke. I would have made a pilgrimage to his grave. I will do that before I die.

But. Can you think of a more moving image of God leaving the glory of Eternal Light to be present in the Human Condition? Of the sorrow of the Heavenly Host at their loss? Of the acceptance of those sorrowful quiet faces that with humanity is where God must be?

And we human beings - have we welcomed and honoured “God” among us” as we ought? Or, have we too often kept God in the little dingy coffin by refusing to live in love?

Brian+