Meaning and Experience, Part 3

Michael Bolerjack

The gifts of God are All of them good, and so She, too, came to me.

Every flake of snow Falls in one declination Despite buffeting.

All human being Absorbed in righteousness shines With the Face of Christ.

Saints are like snowflakes, Unique, undefiled, falling Into Gods embrace.

O Little Flower, You loved and worshipped the Child And His Holy Face.

Mirrors in mirrors, We shine from our origin: Endless, trackless, light.

I Worship on a Mountain that may yet pass. Mountains pass slowly,

Snow mirrors light, white On white on white, though sometimes Saints are like sunsets,

Though not all pass in That way, and this mountain needs Your flower: Remain.

Red, bathed in fire and Having a purity wrought In violence, yet

There was a sister, Teresa Benedicta Of the Cross, a Saint.

Inviolate, though Murdered, still unprofaned, and Having redemption.

Even as death takes Us away, without shadow Of semblance remained,

Just as between the Inside and the outside pure Virginity reigns.

Why not far rather The void or bliss in heaven To lose oneself in?

Nothing as humble As a virgin made to stand Awaiting darkness.

If I realize I am nothing already, Without transition,

She let her love come Unbound, and so did flourish. Bridges of crossing,

Then I need not the Turn or reversal to come As I approach her.

To bridge the cross of The see of troubles not yet Seen in our ending,

All in all, to be, Lost in Him, for as long as I am He is not.

To be our reproach To the entanglement of The imbroglio,

Already naked, She bows a little to hide In beautys shadow,

The imbrications Of a time that did not seal The concealment of.

Form itself is not, Nor the merely assembled, But beauty and want

She fit with Him and He drew with her a drawing Divinely figured.

Make these visions seem The telos of destiny. But what stands behind?

In a bracketing Of the idea of Sensuality,

The unshaped shapes shape: Which is why He must be InComprehensible,

Experience is, And allows the vision seen Not only by Him.

And why they who have Not seen but believe are blessed, As He said theyd be.

She became vision. We can only accuse the Owning in her light.

They thought they saw her, But she was seen by God in In eternity.

As she arrived, she Not only told it so, but Neither turning, showed.

In His vision she Was holy, but they did not Recognize the Saint.

Her means were not void, Though her experience meant Death, as if to mean

Almost more than she Could mean, and almost more than Meaning could allow.

Neither religious, Nor political, nor yet Philosophical,

She is not a text. She interprets us, and shapes Us to time to come,

But personally Was the pain inflicted, as She stood first in line.

Because grasped closer And held more tightly, she is Impressed with His skill

Light and dark reject Knowledge so bestowed on one Who, having known them,

At making martyrs Witness before and after He has let them go,

Was led to a place Where they do not make sense and Never will again.

In abandonment, Not to providence, but to A great emptiness,

Not in this life, or In the next, where there are no Need of sun or moon,

A Christ in person, Already breaking through veils Then, now, everywhere.

Nor will the gates be Ever shut, as all light is Like Hers, held within.

I do not think she Had a quarrel with dying, Or with the killers.

And the Janus face Of the gate of the Roman God stands at the door.

It is a question Whether we do, or should, or Whether to forgive.

But it is not his Beginning, almost over, That is occurring.

What happened then is Happening again, larger In scope and hidden.

The fait accompli Was thought to be a machine To engulf the world.

They do not kill our Bodies now but steal our souls, Or make as if to.

The fateful meeting Of man and technology, Greatness inherent,

Already raptured, The good is gone. We await Appropriation,

Now can just be heard, In a very quiet place Where we go to pray.

The promised advent Of what is said to be screened By being is near.

She did not know of This, but was the first to go, When the time had come.

How could she see the Complicity of horror With their holiness?

Perhaps all is lost, In a certain circle where Things cannot be squared.

Five have reigned, one now Is, and the one to come will Last but a brief span.

But God does the thing That is impossible, like Raise the dead to life.

The first of seven Ascended as holocaust Dawned in damnation.

Though our sins be as Scarlet, yet they will be white As wool, forgiven,

Now by projection From another time the last Tiger regales.

Even though the sin Was doing what we were told, Then looking away.

The martyrs that were, Pray for the martyrs to be. And they witness them.

There are parallels From history, not that Long ago, not that

We recall the deaths They endured but we do not Feel it as we die.

Far from the meaning Of the death of Edith Stein, Whom we remember.

An emptiness in Heart has the clean fulfillment Of wisdom in love.

Even beauty is priced, And is a form of exchange, Without penalty.

Only vessels of Devotion are already So clean, so empty.

But the rewarding To come is for the hidden, Not open, beauty.

The Lord said to clean The inside of the cup where The filth lies hidden.

Could we find beauty At Auschwitz? If we pray with Edith Stein, we will.

When He entered His Capital, He first cleansed the Temple of money.

It is said the Church Is watered by the blood of Martyrs, but the Blood

Some say the world is A mass of seething power, Some see only sex,

Of Christ was a fount For cleansing, so Edith Steins Blood, too serves the Church,

And the desire that Acquires pleasure, property, And the skill of use.

A prevenient Witness to holy peril And times of testing.