Meditations in Fast Times: 31. Night watch is always happening

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.

                31.

Night watch is always happening
in the garden of the soul, where
one always worries that the torch will burn out,
in the strain of that very darkest hour,
before the horizon’s eyelids begin to flutter.

Wondering, wondering,
while restlessly wandering in the dark night,
one constantly wonders about choices,
trying to learn from the uses of choice,
to remember the successes and the failures.

The random thought occurs
that past choices might be woven together
into an enchantment that could conjure or cure,
but the song of the soul gently urges against such folly;
though all time may well be the same,
each moment presents itself differently
to the individual.

Those laws of time that truly exist
lie outside our perception;
these were not carved in stone,
but lovingly touched into living flesh,
softly blown into each wisdom eye,
that the quandary of possibility
might be met flexibly
in each moment of our journey.

No challenge can be answered
with stone tablet thinking;
all answers must be driven
by the informed and intuitive heart.

Waking from the night watch,
of wonder, dreaming and prayer,
is to greet the day of our challenge
with the faith of best intention,
rising with the resolve to act,
in the assurance that our effort
will be met, as befits the need.

© 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