I.
A heart stretched between beauty and Beauty…
between your children’s beauty
and the Beauty, my God, that is your own.
Ah, yes, a heart expanded by loving encounter,
and to this encounter ever drawn.
This is the heart within my breast, given by you,
and touched, wounded, healed, and transformed
by your own divine touch, eternal God.
Stretched between beauty and Beauty…
this has been my life,
and it becomes ever more deeply so:
beauty seen in those whom I have encountered
and who have been entrusted to me in your grace,
yet a beauty propelling my heart toward the infinite Beauty, deeper,
which I have glimpsed, and which has already grasped my heart,
taking me as its own, now and forevermore.
But one beauty is palpable, concrete,
filling imagination, mind, and heart,
while the other Beauty—deeper, more intimate, more near—
is yet too deep, in this life, to be grasped or even felt,
though it is like the light of the sun,
itself not seen, but in which all things are seen
in the radiance that reveals their beauty and truth;
or light a gentle flame within the inner heart,
concealed like the fire in the jars of Gideon’s army,
emitting its warmth and its radiance,
yet revealed only when the vessel of my life at least breaks
to pass over into the Life that never ends.
Divine Beauty, grasping and possessing me, my God,
in the obscure light of faith and hope and love…
And human beauty, grasping me in your name,
and drawing my heart to you, to them,
but also a beauty welcomed and held by me
in the nakedness of solitude, prayer, and love,
in your presence, most beautiful, lovable God.
II.
Ah… ah… ah…
my heart cries out, cries out with love,
with joy, with gratitude, with longing…
as their beauty resonates within me,
an echo, a song, a hymn of praise:
the very beauty of the heart of the one whom you love,
unspeakably unique, awakening wonder and awe.
I both welcome and I let go,
I receive and I trustingly surrender all,
my heart dilating at this encounter with them,
dilating to reach out to you, infinite Beauty,
and dilating to hold them tenderly:
beauty cradled in the arms of Beauty,
beauty radiant in Beauty’s light,
a single Beauty—Beauty divine—
in the intimate depths of the Trinity
and in the intimate depths of the human heart.
Ah… ah… ah…when, my God,
when will these two finally become one,
inseparable in the single embrace of eternal Love?
To hold their beauty as I am held by your Beauty,
to welcome your beloved as I am, my Beloved, welcomed by you,
to be united in a naked, transparent communication
between their unique, sacred, unrepeatable beauty
and the unique and sacred beauty that is my own
—as we meet and are united, eternally,
in the Beauty that is your own,
and which shelters us unceasingly in its tender embrace.