Conversation About Bowing Down

July 28, 2008 6 Comments

A: If our world had been formed and filled by some lesser god, I think he would have made the vast mistake of laboring with too straight a back.

His steely arrowed finger would stab the depths, jolting them to fertility. Then he’d raise his dripping arm, and glaring across the sudden plains, he’d loose a lightning lash of life.

Oh, I have some idea in what anguished, reaching pillars such a god would have cased our world. What scars of insistence would run through its nature; how straight, how measured, how devised a place it would be, where nothing arched or swept or curled, where nothing warbled when it sang!

B: Leave aside these imagined gods, sweet heart.

Here on earth the scars are all our own. Here we had a God, God enough to bend. He leaned, he stooped; beneath his brooding heart the very heaven curved into an dome.

Bow down and make with your form the sweet shape that pleased him.

A: Everywhere I walk on earth, I see the imprint of the Spirit’s sweeping courtesy.

Swimming heavens arch above my head; the swan’s neck is the gracefullest; ungainly forms of mothers in their hour find strength to curl and bend.

B: Yes, and I too was bowed in my hour.

A: Ah, gentle sir, just yesterday I saw a living image of yourself humbly draped in blue. I heard him say, “Joanna, servant of God…” while he leaned over a woman grown a child.

All his children, fifty or more, clustered around him in muted merriment. He fed their mouths like a mother bird. Behind, above him, the walls brooded in gold and colors and sober faces. They all inclined and cherished the little human family.

I knew it for the shape of the Universe. And if I ever needed proof…

B: Hush, dear, hush; don’t speak of proof. I have better things for you.

***

Note: something in a similar form.

Literature, Orthodox Christianity Bow, Conversations, Courtesy, Creation, Form, God, Heaven, Humility, Meaning, Poetic, Shape, Sky