le pointe vierge

it is a new day. ripe with possibility. fragrant with mercy. lush with opportunity. do you feel it? have you blessed the God of heaven for this new day?

merton speaks of le point vierge, which is that moment just before the light when innocence reigns. when the birds ask if it is time to 'be' and He says, 'yes.' merton also says this is the point of absolute poverty before God. the place where we stand naked before Him.

all this reminds me of the garden. that we are daily face to face with God and utterly innocent. then we fall and live out the sad parts of our story, but there is one moment, even just one, when we are who we were created to be.

i don't know how it gets all messed up. how it ends up being a wasted day. how it becomes lost opportunity, but it happens so quickly. the trajectory of the day goes off course so slightly and we become lost. exiled. afraid, again.

i know this dashing of hopes and dreams so well. and yet, each morning, when i am rising asking the Lord a great many questions, i have come to ask Him this one great favor. that i may lay myself down for my husband. that i may throw myself away for my family. that i may be a servant.

it doesn't always work out so well. i get cranky. i get tired. i feel used. but if i am asking to be laid down and poured out, aren't i essentially asking to be used?

you fashioned me for a purpose Lord, let me fulfill that purpose. use me. break me. crush me. rend me. none of those are sweet, easy places to live from.

so then is my dashing of hopes merely the crestfallenness of one who does not realize he is being used for the glory of God in the land of the living?

perhaps. i never really thought of it that way before. perhaps that is my point of joy then, when i feel used. this upside down kingdom where the saints will not be put to shame, yet are martyred, stricken and left seemingly without hope.

yet there is hope. the undercurrent of hope and faith runs pure and clean. sometimes underground. sometimes in plain view.

this being enamored of emotions and "consolations" as st. john would call it, is a great illusion. st. john says we become so enamored of the rind that we lose the benefit of the fruit. come to a place beyond emotion, beyond feeling, beyond consolation. that is the place where God dwells. He uses the emotions to be sure. but there is a time when they are simply inadequate. the orange gets peeled and we are left with the fruit.

i don't understand the Lord. i don't really want to. because then i'd have Him prepackaged by my expectation. i embrace this mystifying trust and hope that today when i feel used, i can realize it is the feeling that is illusion. i hope i can enter that place of absolute poverty and trust, and innocently commune with God. midday. not just when i'm half-asleep. but when i am fully functioning.

sometimes i slip into this zone as a poet. i think it is a privilege we are afforded. that is when i see the great beauty all around. in the simple acts of kindness, in the faces that i encounter. perhaps today i'll be able to find that place again fraught with the presence of God. i am most willing.