my last night with milosz

...until I buy my own copy of his collected works. I plan to return Christine's to her tomorrow so I wanted to glance through it one more time tonight. Without fail, Christine's passion served as a provision for me. I needed him this summer.

Tonight, his poem "Fear" caught my attention, especially these lines:

Where have you gone, Father? Why do you not pity

Your children lost in this murky wood?

His witness to the devastation of the Nazi regime in Europe suggests layers of meaning in way I can't fathom, but what does resonate within me is this question: where are you God in my spiritual and relational barrenness?

The night has no end

from now on darkness will last forever.

The travelers are homeless, they will die of hunger.

Our break is bitter and hard as stone.

I want to believe You will provide, but today I went hungry and I don't understand why.

---------------------

One of the first poems I read in this book is simply titled "Love." I read it a month ago and some of these lines I'll never forget - especially the first four.

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart.

Without knowing it, from various ills -

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn't always understand.

And of course the first two lines of the last stanza. He wants to use himself and things so that they stand in the glow of ripeness. The lines I didn't mention are mysterious to me. But in a way, I guess I'm living the mystery that this poem suggests- those specific lines I mentioned inform my life right now, though I don't understand the whole.

Right now I'm not reading these poems too closely, and I'm not claiming they directly inform one another, but when I look at them side by side, I begin to ask questions:

How do we reconcile our condition of "lostness" with the promise that we are found? How do we reconcile barrenness with the glow of ripeness? How can I find healing in distance when all I want is to draw near and find it there?

I must consider how love and fear can be closely related. Sometimes love begets fear - fear of disappointment, loss, or the illusion that I once believed to be reality. When I notice this happening, I deeply desire the knowledge and ability to reorder my loves to cast out fear and insecurity.

Milosz's vision of love stuns me and then moves me to believe that love in its fullness is possible. I will pursue these possibilities that I did not create, but hope to witness in the glow of ripeness. Someday.