In the beginning, if there was a beginning,
If this cosmic event actually began in time and space,
If this galactic happening is not simply a short story,
All our poor finite minds could invent1
In the beginning was life - experimental by nature,
Resolving itself in myriad forms,
Not certain what it wanted to make of itself,
A universal energy precariously posturing
On the slim margin between life and lifelessness.
This essence of life,
Knowing only the upward thrust,
Always impatiently changing forms over eons,
In an immense laboratory,
At last came to consciousness of itself,
And we became living souls.
Out of this fragile presence are we born.
This mystical presence cannot be captured
By theological treatise
Or philosophical tome.
It eludes the merely human mind.
It can only be intimated by
Dancers - musicians - poets - visionaries.
One cannot seek out this fragile presence,
Only discover it.
One cannot say
Lo, it is here, or, lo it is there,
As if to point it out on some human screen.
It is a presence that can only be sensed,
In the everyday of living and loving.
In centuries gone by,
In tales told long ago
Wise people went in search of it,
Shepherds left their flocks to seek it.
They journeyed mythical miles
To witness its fragile existence in a manger.
We do not live in legends,
We make our own stories,
We discover the spark of divinity
Hidden in the everyday.
There is a fragile presence that disturbs
All categories of rational thought,
That finds expression in myth and legend
More than essay and treatise,
That disturbs the complacency of existence,
That denies the "nothing-but-ness" of life,
That gives relief to the flat landscape of the soul. (repeated)
I have felt within me a fragile presence
That pulls - so gently,
That prompts - so subtly,
That prods - so delicately,
With a persistence that draws me on,
That awakens me from spiritual slumber,
That permits me to look at the night and call it holy,
To behold the day and name it sacred,
To witness the coming of new life into the world
And proclaim it divine,
That awakens me in the midst of winter,
To celebrate a warm season of the spirit.
It is we who are the fragile presence.
In the sensation of breath,
The beating of heart,
The touch of skin to skin,
The tingling of taste,
In memory of loved ones,
Lost, but not forgotten,
In anticipation of a future
Whose promising outlines are yet dim.
From the alpha which is birth
To the omega which is death -
From the first forced cry "I live."
To the expiring breath of dignified death --
From the warm intimacy of loved ones,
To the cold of loneliness,
I live in the fragile presence,
And it lives in me.
There is this presence within us -
This seed of the divine,
This fragment of the holy.
For the holy is the most human in us longing for expression.
It does not announce itself through winged angels,
Nor a voice from out of the whirlwind,
Is not pointed out by shepherds
Nor recognized by kings.
The holy within us is our simple recognition and acceptance
Of the fragile presence.
The fragile presence has had its custodians over time
From Socrates' faith in truth
To noble Confucius and the fitting life,
Gentle Buddha and the eight fold path,
The prophet Mohammed and the holy Koran,
The love-giving courage of Jesus in life and death,
Down to our own preservers of the light.
The great white doctor of darkest Africa, Schweitzer by name,
The great black preacher of white America, Martin Luther King,
And nameless others,
Who sought to preserve the fragile presence
As one who, while walking,
Cups a hand about the candle flame
That it may light the way
Through the uncertain darkness.
These keepers of the light;
Who were these keepers of the light?
No god-ordained saints were they,
No saviors pre-ordained for greatness.
Men and women of flesh and blood they were,
Born as we are born
Subject to all hurt and happiness
That is the common lot.
Men and women who served the fragile presence,
Who saw radiance of the eternal light,
Who felt warmth against cold drafts of darkness,
Who saw need for its protection,
No light ever being eternal
Without human help.
These keepers of the light
Knew its fragile flame must be sheltered, and who to shelter
it but themselves.
And that is the task this Christmas season --
To be keepers of the light -
To be preservers of the fragile presence.
In carols sung but not believed, the believing being too deep for words.
In the myth and mystery of angel voices, the lyrics lost in
magical melody.
In legends that herald the birth of greatness into the world,
The details disappearing in the telling.
In the flickering candlelight that casts so tenuous a warm
glow,
where shadows play changing patterns on the wall.
There is the fragile presence.
We are keepers of the light, who cup trembling hands around
the candle flame.
We are preservers of the fragile presence.
We live in the fragile presence
We who pause at solstice time
(Solstice -- sun stop, the dividing ridgepole of the year).
When darkest days are longest, the earth takes pause,
Chooses the light once more,
And hurtling through the cold void
Begins its eternal journey toward the sun.
There is a perpetual enigma
In this inexorable turning of the seasons,
In the great cosmic dance of planets
Whirling dizzily through the abyss,
In the pulsing of distant stars
Twinkling light years across endless darkness,
Showing their presence in the vast absence of space
There is a mystic presence on this planet
Where heat and light are exactly right
For creating and sustaining the likes of we who wonder.
Who knows what are the odds of life against death on this
earth?
Does God indeed play dice with the universe?
Who knows if a tiny cosmic shift here or there
Would have upset the delicate balance
That chooses life.
No matter - it is enough that we are.
We make our own peace with the fragile presence,
Yet we do not - no, not ever - we do not ever capture it.
The presence is fragile, oh so fragile,
That torrents of words all but drown it out,
That heedless deeds very nearly squelch it,
That human busyness virtually overwhelms it.
There is a fragile presence within us,
A presence as soft as snowfall,
Like snowflakes
So fragile they melt in one's breath,
Yet given a slight head start,
Can bring whole cities to a halt.
So it is
That there is a power in presence
However fragile it may seem.
Though it cannot be sought, neither can it be escaped;
it is omnipresent as the air, it is a pulsing, mystic
life within and without.
In the hush of a fireplace on a winter's eve
Where memory and hope commingle
Leaping in tongues of flame and clouds of smoke
Into the cool night air
Leaving warmth as their trace.
Eyes see through the flame
To the deeper light of memory.
Eyes see through smoke
To the purer realm of hope.
In the dazzling whiteness of maternity wards,
In the dark of night where lovers lie,
In rooms where last tearful words are spoken,
In daring deeds that do not count the cost,
In simple clasp of friendly hands upon loneliness,
In breathless dark of starry night,
There is no escape from the fragile presence.
This presence of which I speak is fragile,
Delicate like the symmetry of the spider's web,
Its glory only suggested by sun on moistness.
This web is of strands
Strong enough to hold a universe together.
Imagine the cosmos, a great spider's web,
Stretching over the black vastness
Catching in its strands a planet here and there,
Bejeweled now and again with a flaming star -as a bead of
moisture caught for a fleeting moment
The space between the threads a deep darkness.
Every part is connected to every other part,
The microscopic to the macroscopic,
A slight movement here affects all the rest.
The cosmic connectedness of what is.
And, putting the poor spider to shame,
All this connectedness is
Without benefit of strands,
All held in perfect place
By invisible forces that dwarf the spider's mind,
And our own.
It is a fragile presence
Like faith and hope and love.
Invisible, yet like them, strong beyond all believing.
This fragile presence, predictable to the scientist,
Full of surprises for the poet.
One never knows when a bare trace of rainbow
Crosses our painful path,
When a white dusting of snow
Brings the brown earth alive to beauty.
Across the flat landscape of the spirit
Are mountains and valleys and plateaus
Carved out by the fragile presence,
Making our wandering no set thing,
But a journey of unknown paths
To an uncertain destiny.
Look for surprises on the way.
Life is a problem to be solved.
Worse, it is a misery to be endured.
This is not the end of the matter -
At such holy times in the year as this
Solving problems and enduring miseries
Is not the whole story of our humanity.
At such times this fragile presence
Invites us to life that is much more -
A mystery to be lived.
Whatever else it may be,
Life is a mystery to be lived,
Plagued with abysmal depths
Too terrifying to probe with human eyes,
Beset by agonies too painful to explain with human mind,
Caressed by wonders
Too majestic all but the most poetic vision,
Offered a plenitude,
Too much for human gratitude,
A mystery much more profound that words can say,
More poignant than feelings can tell,
More miraculous than lovely legends
Of virgin birth and angels in the sky,
More joyful that any wise men can be,
More mysterious than the why of anything --
This fragile presence.
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