Meditations in Fast Times: 28. I'm not eager to repeat

Note to Readers: “Meditations in Fast Times” is a devotional writing experiment for the Season of Lent. Each day during the season, I am writing a poem as a meditation on, taking as my inspiration and intertextual basis, T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, as well as incorporating the daily office, current events, and other readings—some the same as those Eliot used while composing his seminal work and others.

                28.

I’m not eager to repeat
those thoughts and acts I now regret;
they’ve been done, and now are gone,
—let it go.

Last season’s fruit has all been et,
it served the role it’s nature met;
it’s all done, and now is gone,
—let it go.

Let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go;
Help us rise up to new day, let it go.

From wrong to wrong, and then again,
we seek to find a better way;
lead us to an answer,
—let us go.

Come, labor on; when each soul prays
with heart, at break of day,
toward Your presence in the light
—help us go.

Help us go, help us go, help us go, help us go;
Help us rise up to Your light, help us go.

And when I leave my soul
out on the pure sands of some distant shore,
do not mourn my passing
—let me go.

Though beyond awareness,

I truly hope my purpose has been met;
Sing me to the heav’nly gate
—let me go.

Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go,
Help me rise up to New Day, let me go.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 13. Getting off the train

                13.

Getting off the train,
thinking to leave behind the clutter of old ways,
our old, shabby thoughts drift across the platform
and flow up the escalator with us,
flowing amid the general mess
of commingled thoughts and emotions,

—really the wants of the rough and tumble masses—
whose sound has gone out into all lands.

Strive as we might to stay in possession,
sometimes rummaging the lost and found
to reclaim half-baked ideas,
the mobile phone dropped yesterday,
or cans for the recycle,
we miss the small presence,
the unprepossessing gift
that arrives, unasked for,
in the face of the flowering weed
growing out of the blighted cracks
of the forgotten and foreclosed factory;
seeking so much beyond our ken,
we fail to see the ordinary
(still very much noteworthy,
in as much as it is woven into the fabric of our being).

Whether we see it or not,
the weed is, in our time or any other,
and exists to be;
that it purifies the air is beside the point,
but for that we should give thanks.

We struggle forward,
making plans,
rehearsing incoherent speeches,
wrestling with emotions,
but Truth interrupts,
does it not?

Truth is neither of passion or dispassion,
but it constantly crosses our path,
manages to derail all our plans
and frequently sends unwanted messengers,
as if to say:
here I am,
pay attention.

Truth is,
Truth is what happens
when we are making other plans;
time and place cease to matter,
acceptance is all in all.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen