Think of These Things
Nikolay Koshelev, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Jesus,
We sought You sorrowing
In Carthage and Ur of the Chaldees,
In the cities of the plain where a woman turned to salt
And Egypt in the fire-hail when the desert turned to glass,
Peering under Hittite chariots and Grecian phalanxes,
Up and down the roads and aqueducts,
Across Tibetan peaks and Mongol steppes
And through the forests of the land beyond the ice-bridge,
Finding always heralds, harbingers of You,
But never Your Majesty,
Nor even the fleetingest echo of Your Name.
Our foremost sire, instructed to be fruitful, knew his wife
And, being known, she brought forth fruit,
But fruit already fanged with venoms;
Then Babel broke our tongue and strewed our knowledges,
And we turn’d each unto his own way,
Multiplying into nations, dividing into states,
Ramifying into sects and schools a hundredthousandfold,
Each in its own way yearning after truth, hence after You,
Whom to seek is to know,
Though darkly.
And every bough, in forking into branches,
Every branch, in forking into twigs,
Grew further from its fellows, gaining unshared knowledge
(For no man can master everything)
Till they bowed down, weighted, freighted, with their fruits,
Bent inward, curling into self-gnawed serpents.
But the knowledge-tree was razed and turned to timbers,
Raised again as a gibbet from which You,
Transfixed, transfigured,
To the bent world bequeathed right angles
That we might puncture the antediluvian horizons,
Tall-grown in grace from sitting at the Feet
That stain the grass.
And now the labyrinth of ramifying twigs,
Each one grown stronger on its ever-lonelier path,
Unfurl again, borne up by that cruciform spring of sap,
So all branchtips can see straight back to the forgotten trunk,
Straight forward on the way assigned them by the trunk,
And repartake in one another, all now grown a hundredthousandfold;
Thus our long exile from each other and from You
Shall teach us (once You heal us) to know You
More highly, more deeply, than before.
For His Word shall not return to Him void,
But being known, You bear abundant fruit
(Thou hast kept the good wine until now)
And nourish us so that, found, we may seek you now rejoicing,
For we already know the Name
Made known to Man by Joseph at the Circumcision:
The Glory hidden in the aqueducts,
The Majesty huddled, patient, in the chariots,
And we too shall return to Him not void
But murmuring the Name we knew, forgot, and know again more fully—
Jesus.
Jamey Toner is the author of The Kai, the true account of a young man finding faith through the martial arts, and the co-author of Brides of Christ, a children's book from the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles. Toner lives and works in Massachusetts with his beautiful wife, three lovely children, and a fluctuating number of chickens.
