Dream Song 47

John Berryman: Dream Song 47: April Fool's Day, or, St Mary of Egypt

— Thass a funny title, Mr Bones.
— When down she saw her feet, sweet fish, on the threshold,
she considered her fair shoulders
and all them hundreds who have them, all
the more who to her mime thickened & maled
from the supple stage,

and seeing her feet, in a visit, side by side
paused on the sill of The Tomb, she shrank: 'No.
They are not worthy,
fondled by many' and rushed from The Crucified
back through her followers out of the city ho
across the suburbs, plucky

to dare my desert in her late daylight
of animals and sands. She fall prone.
Only wind whistled.
And forty-seven years with our caps on,
whom God has not visited.

The Convert

The Convert

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

G.K. Chesterton

SUNDAY OF ST JOHN OF THE LADDER

Do you remember the childhood game of Snakes & Ladders? It is a simple game. Moving along the curving path of squares from the beginning square at the lower left hand of the board towards 'home' at the upper right of the board a player can land on a square that scoots him ahead on a ladder to a higher point, or sends him sliding down on a snake towards the beginning . Ladders advance; snakes are a set-back. The ladders are like virtues and the snakes are like vices. Learning, practising, mastering, persevering in virtue shapes our character in holiness and advances us toward the Kingdom of God. Each virtue builds on other virtues. Vice debases our character, obscures the image of God, sends us on a trajectory away from realising the Kingdom. Ever vice is linked to other vices, a slippery slope.

Of course, our metaphor of Snakes & Ladders will only get us so far. It is not only some squares that are ladders and others that are snakes. Every moment of our life, every choice we make, can be either ladder or snake.

In the Ladder of Divine Ascent, St John teaches us that our effort, our climb, is what we must do as an expression - a necessary expression - of our faith, hope and love. We are to struggle against wickedness and selfishness, and cultivate virtue, because the Lord says: If you love me, keep my commandments. We strive to keep the commandments, to overcome vice and pursue virtue, because we love Him. This effort shapes us towards the Kingdom. But at the end of the day we discover that it is not so much our climbing, our effort, that brings us to where we need to be, but the Lord's grace that brings virtue to its fruition. Our work puts in a position to receive His grace. Indeed, according to St John and as clearly seen in the icon of today's feast, even the one who perseveres in all the virtues discovers that at the very top of the Ladder there is an unbridgeable gap between it and the Kingdom of God, a gap that can only be overcome by the hand of the Lord, Who reaches down to save us and bring us home.

Sergei Fudel, on sorrow and joy at Pascha

Now I am celebrating Pascha another way, on my own like a great sinner..., and in this fashion I rediscover the Paschal service. Till now it was the Divine service of Paradise, but in it I now see the possibility of repentance and remorse. My childhood and youth and also the first years of my priesthood were spent with our dear departed Father, and it was through him that I first learned to understand Pascha. ... Even as a child I was impressed by the way he sang the Paschal Ikos. ... He sang this Ikos in such a way that its meaning was revealed, and the sense of one or other of the expressions underlined. Then, amidst the delight and rejoicing of this night, he would suddenly retreat into himself, so to speak, and as he came to the words, 'O Master, arise, that those who have fallen may rise again,' I could sense that he was inwardly weeping and sobbing. Who was he grieving for? For our Saviour? No, now I know, it was for himself, the fallen. /.../ The triumphal climax of the yearly calendar ... merges into the climax of repentance..., so that the light of repentance pours down from Zion over the whole of the remainder of the Church calendar. A cry of repentance breaks into the Paschal hymns, a cry which penetrates into the depths of the penitent heart so that paradise is revealed. ... Tears, tears of repentance overwhelm me, but in my soul I can feel that joy is growing, joy that He has risen, and not only He but I also, I the fallen. (Cry of the Spirit, pp. 69-73)