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Enlarged by Desire
Aren't we enlarged
by the scale of what we're able
to desire?
These lines are from Mark Doty's poem, "Messiah (Christmas Portions)." It describes a concert by a small-town choral group, ambitiously attempting Handel's "Messiah." There's not a professional singer in the bunch: just the bearded postal clerk, "altos from the A&P, soprano from the T-shirt shop," and the neighbor who "fights operatically" with her significant other. The poem's narrator is skeptical of their ability: even the soloists, he says, lack "the strength to found the mighty kingdoms these passages propose."
Yet, somehow, the music lifts them beyond mundane, demonstrating "what it claims: glory shall be revealed." The everyday folk from town become a choir of "familiar angels." Looking at them, hearing them, the narrator perceives that "inside these wrappings burns another, brighter life, quickened, now, by song."
Are we not, indeed, "enlarged by the scale of what we're able to desire?" Why then do we so often set our sights on desires unworthy, such as higher scores on a video game, or a larger car in the garage?
Like Lazarus at the door of his tomb, we are often still wrapped in the trappings of death, even though we stand in the presence of Resurrection. In this season of Easter, let us never forget that "inside these wrappings burns another, brighter life."
-Bill
To hear Mark Doty read his poem, click here. |
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Repository of Unlived Things - by Jan
No one lives his life . . .
Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away . . .
Maybe all paths lead there, to the repository of unlived things.
In Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, Austrian-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke speaks for many of us who do not live our lives completely. We move about aimlessly or like "clothes hanging limply on the walls."
Some - perhaps you - simply mature into the knowledge of life's purpose. Others are only awakened by an extraordinary event, perhaps, as I was, when the doctor brought the diagnosis of a life-altering illness.
Since early February I've had time to consider the storehouse of my life beginning first with scary symptoms, then doctors' visits, then CT scans and lab tests indicating a 95% probability of stage 2 renal cancer, then surgery April 6 to remove the left kidney. Following surgery, pathology reports determined that the tumor was benign. A miracle on our hands?
Throughout many of these recent unfilled days and nights, I have had the chance to visit the storehouse where some of my unlived life is stored away. I am lucky; I have a second chance to live fully, further unfolding my life's purpose.
I am immensely grateful to you for the prayers, cards and calls, food and flowers, and other tokens of well-wishes that poured in. The support of family and friends sustained and strengthed me. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.  I thank those of you especially who encouraged me to continue my path to God through my work and ministry. You told me, "You have more work to do for the Lord" and I heed your message. I choose "the path of life" (Ps. 16:11) rather than the path "to the repository of unlived things." I believe in Easter - in the Risen Christ - in our lives. Alleluia!
Photo Attribution: Chris 73 / Wikimedia Commons
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