Category: Meditations

Creator become created
Yes, God became man
He himself was made
Nothing was made without him

Continue reading “A Christmas poem”

– A poem of meditation when I was stuck in Paris flying back from Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire
by Vijay Sarvepalli

Stuck in the transit between these two worlds
I pause in Paris, when I stumbled upon these birds
They do not stop singing even when sky is not blue
Maybe because they still believe their creator is true

Continue reading “The French Sparrow Song”

A meditation on the first rain, when the Dominos Aqua (Lord of Waters) communes with the Dominos Omnipotens (Lord of All).

What is your summons, O unseen hand?
I have carried your charge faithfully 
to nurse the dust with dew,
to make the seed awaken in its bed.
Have you yet another burden for me?

Selah

I, who shaped the heavens and the earth,
am also the keeper of justice.
My eyes can no longer bear the sight of evil;
I regret the man I have made.
His thoughts are corrupt,
his labor turns beauty to waste.

You, water of the second day,
have long sustained what I began,
but man’s folly knows no limit.
Godliness he does not pursue
self dominates his thoughts.
Go therefore, do as I command,
and delay not until it is done.

Maskil

On the second day you parted me
firmament from firmament,
waters above from waters below.
I have held the clouds in mercy,
shielding man from the sun’s fierce breath,
guarding his fields from drought.

And now you bid me open heaven’s vault,
to loose the flood and drown all breath?
Your Spirit will strive with flesh no more,
yet even now a spark of heaven
flickers faint within their clay;
its measure of years is hardly complete.

Shiggaion

I never thought such power
would be used to begin again.
Hope stirs in me to see, from afar,
an earth without the strife of men.
I am ready to pour myself out,
to fill every vale with silence and death,
for from your hand even endings
may bring out new things.

Selah

You, take my regret into your fury.
Forget not my mercy in the midst of wrath.
Preserve for me one life,
a small ember to rekindle the world.

I have seen one man but Noah,
and his three sons beside him.
Spare their lives,
that the earth may again wear their colors.
I will teach him to build an ark,
to rest warm when all is cold and dark.
As you say, I could make all new things,
however I choose to make all things new.

Selah

But is this not your wrath fulfilled?
Why preserve the remnant of despair?
Noah is flawed, and his sons stray;
no nation of hope grows from such roots.
His careful hands cannot cleanse
what stains the soul of man.
Is this your justice?

It is not justice you fail to see, oh yet
it is mercy.
My mercy triumphs over ruin.
Noah, though broken, bears my image still,
a dim reflection of the holy.
From such dust I will bring forth life
tender shoots from barren ground.
I will overlook what mars his soul
and wake it toward a new grace.

I see only sorrow.
Noah drunk in his grief,
his people hollow in song,
their joys thin as smoke.
They play with shadows
and forget the light.
How shall such lineage
carry your flame?

Wisdom has spoken through you,
to see a race adrift in doctrine and fear,
their hearts quick to worry,
their spirits slow to rise.
Above the weight of your great waters
Noah shall prepare a wood that floats your waves.
Then my beloved one through
the waters that brought death,
shall  rise to breathe life back, the one that
leads beyond this earth.

Your Son, yet He is but one.
Will God become man
and finish what was begun?
Further, no plan I can see,
only frail humankind.
How shall this small kin
bring forth your Son
and let mankind survive?

As I brought forth herb and fruit on the third day,
so shall I raise Him again from the grave.
From darkness shall spring salvation unseen.
He will descend to the depths,
preach to the imprisoned spirits,
and proclaim the hope eternal 
even those who perished in these waters
will go forth and find refuge.

Not only bright, but the death of one so holy
will shake creation itself.
I shall shroud the world in darkness
to cover its grief;
even angels will still their song.
Prophets may whisper such a fate,
yet I cannot fathom its wisdom.
Will not evil itself rise
to slay your only Son?

This, too, is from Me.
I have told my beloved:
You may lay down your life 
and take it up again.

As I brought forth firstfruit from the earth,
so shall I command the hosts
to bring forth My Son,
and fulfill the covenant I began:
a rainbow in the sky,
a promise never again to flood the earth,
but to renew it once more.

Fire shall come, not to destroy,
but to refine.
New heavens and new earth shall rise.
Judgment delayed is not one forgotten;
it will cleanse the wicked
and exalt the lowly to My rest.

Hallelujah

O the depth of wisdom and knowledge,
how unsearchable Your ways!
Power You have given me 
weightier than all the flowing things,
strength to dissolve mountains, metal, and stone;
yet cannot compare to the grace You extend to man
to be redeemed so strangely, yet beautifully.

Now I see what You saw in man
a light You would not let my waters drown.
I remember the dawn
when You drew light from darkness;
I can see now that even evil
serves the birth of greater good.
You turn mortality toward the eternal,
and from this first rain, by Your mercy,
not merely the prolonging innocence
but one renewed by love. Not just
Eden’s life eternally,
but new and pure life shall spring forth,
more wondrous than the garden itself,
a life that death cannot stain,
a creation renewed beyond imagination.