Home Sapphires Midweek Musings: Encountering the Divine | Columns

Midweek Musings: Encountering the Divine | Columns

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Midweek Musings: Encountering the Divine | Columns

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I found personally important artwork in a New York Occasions article, “Tangible Ensures of Salvation” by Holland Cotter (June 12, 1994). He traces Armenian illuminated gospel manuscripts from the tenth by way of the 18th century. The artists within the travelling exhibition, “Treasures in Heaven,” work out encounters with the divine. Cotter notes “St. John” by Mesrop of Khizan (energetic 1605–1651). St. John stands in a swirl of throbbing mild in coloured rays, God’s phrases move into St. John’s mouth.

At age 78, I title experiences of blue. My first expertise of divine presence got here by way of coloration. My mom was dying of leukemia. Mild shone by way of cobalt vases and comforted me.

At age 9, I took artwork lessons. Summer time blue skies gave pleasure. Gerard Manley Hopkins noticed blue as revelatory. On Could 12, 1870, he wrote that he had by no means seen something extra lovely than the bluebell. He knew the great thing about the Lord by it. In his e-book, “In regards to the Religious in Artwork,” Wassily Kandinsky states that blue is the everyday heavenly coloration. I’m wondering if Kandinsky ever learn the poem, “The Cloud” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. He speaks of “Heaven’s blue smile.”

My poem “Blue Sonnet” is predicated on Exodus 23:9-10.

Blue Sonnet

Blue morning glories attain from floor to sky,

Jacob’s ladder connecting earth, heaven.

Singing, angel muse patiently stands by.

Pure hue, glory, loveliness is leaven.

Hagar trying upon the face of God

Lived. So shall these whose gaze is powerful sufficient

To embrace the icon nourished in sod.

Magnificence so deep unhappiness is joyful hush.

Fathers of Israel noticed beneath God’s toes

A sapphire pavement. Hallow, reward, chant.

Sing in Heaven’s Metropolis evil’s defeat.

Foundations of treasured, valuable blue stone,

Energy, purest presence, God’s face alone.

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In Connecticut for 10 years, we worshiped in an Episcopal church. Level-counter level: No extra Puritan clear glass home windows that allow in God’s pure mild. Stained glass blues evoked belief that “beneath are the eternal arms.”

In 2007, Eleanor (Ellie), who took me in after my first mom died, was dying. As a result of she was not a church member, her sister’s fundamentalist buddy fearful that Ellie wouldn’t go to heaven. I requested Ellie to ship me two indigo buntings from the past so I might write a poem.

Indigo Bunting Sonnet

Two weeks earlier than Eleanor Parsons died

I requested her for an indication from the Past

Specifying two indigo buntings

Loveliest birds, pure notes of heaven’s music.

Two birds don’t should be in the identical place.

Only one would appear like a coincidence.

Double sightings would make a stronger case.

Affirm God’s vast welcome, love’s deepest sense.

Earlier than the memorial service day

A blessed sympathy observe got here within the mail.

An indigo bunting: “Thanks.” I prayed.

Bunting additionally on the again, my spirit sailed.

Proof or temporal ambiguity

Creating room for magnificence’s thriller?

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Rosemary, my sister of coronary heart and fireside, discovered “The Indigo Bunting: A Memoir of Edna St. Vincent Millay,” by Vincent Sheean in Ellie’s library. From her possible final couplets, Millay grieved the dying of husband Eugen. Within the presence of lapis and borage, blue jay and indigo bunting, she would management herself or go inside fairly than flaw such perfection together with her grief.

In 2017, I with gratitude noticed the unique of St. John within the J. Paul Getty Museum. I finish with my poem “Streaming Magnificence.”

Streaming Magnificence

St. John the Evangelist

Mesrop of Khizan, 1615,

Armenian, manuscript artist

illuminated a Gospel e-book, Isfahan,

with colours of desert and sky, sacred

artwork owned by the J. P. Getty Museum,

St. John is wearing blue and inexperienced.

hues within the Outdated and New Testaments,

with revelatory import.

The elders of Israel noticed below the

toes of God a sapphire pavement of

clearest blue, suggesting holiness.

Mark experiences that Jesus ordered individuals

to take a seat down on the inexperienced grass—in Greek

the recent, yellow inexperienced of springtime.

The nice feeding of fish and bread

gifted nourishment for physique. The colour

inexperienced invited hope.

Greeks didn’t favor blue and inexperienced,

within the Odyssey, metallic colours plus,

daybreak’s rosy fingers and wine-dark sea.

Not inclined to see the sky as blue

nor grass as inexperienced they discovered different

colours talking, singing of their prose.

Colours in life and historical literature

preserve my thoughts attuned, coronary heart pulsing,

considering St. John for many years.

Swirling curls envelope the Evangelist.

Blue rays move into St. John’s mouth.

His scribe, a toddler, is crammed with surprise.

Likewise at age three I used to be amazed,

comforted by mild shining by way of

cobalt vases as my mom was dying.

Imaginative and prescient of the Logos in streams of blue,

transcendence by way of mild and coloration,

sustaining magnificence, luminous Phrase.

Sharon R. Chace holds a Grasp of Theological Research diploma with a biblical focus from Weston Jesuit College of Theology (1998) and is poet laureate of Rockport.



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