Love Is Come Again

I want to share with you a beautiful French carol for Easter that happened across my path a while back called "Love Is Come Again" or alternately "Now the Green Blade Riseth."  I wanted to create a perfect arrangement of it first, but, as I reflected upon the fact that it might never happen due to the other projects on my proverbial plate, there came to my mind the phrase oft-repeated by my drama professors

"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

So this version is by no means perfect.  I hope at least you will find it good.  And I hope you will enjoy this beautiful and moving hymn as much as I do.

Love Is Come Again

1. Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,

Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain; 

Love lives again, that with the dead has been: 

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

2. In the grave they laid Him, Love who had been slain, 

Thinking that He never would awake again, 

Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen: 

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

3. Forth He came at Easter, like the risen grain,

Jesus who for three days in the grave had lain; 

Quick from the dead the risen One is seen: 

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green. 

4. When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Jesus' touch can call us back to life again,
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

Be Thou My Vision

Also, in honor of Saint Patrick upon this day and the Creator of all:

Open the Doors of Your Heart

"Beauty will save the world," said Dostoevsky.  His words may be taken in a general fashion or referring to the Creator Himself.  Either way, he speaks to a deep truth.

Gregory Wolfe supports the power of this statement in his beautiful essay titled "The Wound of Beauty" in which he defends the need for beauty.  He also writes of the power of beauty to strike us to the very depths of our being: "Beauty itself wounds us, pierces our hearts, opens us up."

If beauty wounds, then where shall we find healing?

Ultimately the source of our healing can only be found in the Incarnation.  For there the great rift between God and man is healed by the Creator becoming His own creation.

All of us are called to participate in that great work of healing through incarnating truth in our very selves.  Those of us called to be artists must take that incarnation a step further, revealing the depths of God through various mediums that reflect the core of our very selves.

Yet we artists are no less broken.

Unless we participate in the great work of redemption—the great work of healing—we fail in our vocation.  Our art becomes worthless, a merely shameful display of our talents and self-worth, an excuse for pride and vainglory.  Yet when we allow ourselves to collaborate in Christ's redemptive sacrifice, our handiwork has power beyond what we can imagine.

The question I would propose for you to ponder is this one: how does healing come through art?

I would argue that it comes through much the same way as when Christ healed.  He looked for an open heart—a heart of faith.  When He healed a man who was deaf and dumb, He said: "Ephpheta, which is, 'Be thou opened.'" (Mark 7:34)

It is through being open that we are healed.  Returning again to the theme of the wound of beauty, you can understand how it ties in here: the act of wounding is a means of making an openness.  Whether we allow that wound or whether beauty strikes us without our awareness, opening up our brokenness, we find ourselves in a perfect position to be healed because we have that openness—that vulnerability.  In so doing, we may find ourselves becoming channels of God's grace as well.

Sometimes I think our greatest challenge as artists is to embrace that vulnerability and not to flee from it.  We are often masters of flight.  We disguise our cowardice as perfectionism or scorn or pride or any manner of things.

In the end, when we allow ourselves to be powerless, we experience the freedom of true creation.  That is the paradox.  As Saint Paul said: when we are weak, then we are strong.

That experience of freedom—whether through creative work or through some other means—touches the very depths of our being.  It fills our restless hearts and we want nothing more.  For where we open ourselves to His working, we become one with Him, and He brings healing.

The presence of God hurts.  Beauty wounds.

Yet just as sometimes a bone must be re-broken to set aright or a wound opened to be drained, pain precedes healing—it opens the way.  So God sometimes hurts in order to heal.

All we need to do is open the door of our hearts.  When we have the support of those around us and see their own battle-wounds, we may find the courage to choose the glory of what feels to us like death.

For ultimately the battle for openness lies within the boundaries of our own hearts.  We must go into the desert there and wrestle with ourselves.

A seed must die to bring forth fruit.

Anthropomorphic Analogy

It is true that a canvas simply and blindly offered to the brush feels at each moment only the stroke of the brush.  It is the same with a lump of stone.  Each blow from the hammering of the sculptor's chisel makes it feel—if it could—as if it were being destroyed.  As blow after blow descends, the stone knows nothing of how the sculptor is shaping it.  All it feels is a chisel chopping away at it, cutting it and mutilating it.  For example, let's take a piece of stone destined to be carved into a crucifix or a statue.  We might ask it: "What do you think is happening to you?"  And it might answer: "Don't ask me.  All I know is that I must stay immovable in the hands of the sculptor, and I must love him and endure all he inflicts on me to produce the figure he has in mind.  He knows how to do it.  As for me, I have no idea what he is doing, nor do I know what he will make of me.  But what I do know is that his work is the best possible.  It is perfect.  I welcome each blow of his chisel as the best thing that could happen to me, although, if I'm to be truthful, I feel that every one of these blows is ruining me, destroying me and disfiguring me.  But I remain unconcerned.  I concentrate on the present moment, think only of my duty, and suffer all that this master sculptor inflicts on me without knowing his purpose or fretting about it.

That analogy from—can you guess it?—Abandonment to Divine Providence rings true.  We are that canvas or that stone.

Have you ever felt like everything that is happening to you is making you worse, like you are losing all you have gained?  Do you ever feel like everything inflicted upon you makes it impossible to become the beautiful light that you ought to be to set the world on fire?

In those moments perhaps you may find some consolation in this analogy.  For whatever we may feel, whatever we may think, we are not omniscient.  Only One knows truly what will come of every blow that rains upon us and every chiseling away of what we consider necessary.  He is the one who will make of us a statue of incomparable beauty that will take away our breath when we see it at last exposed from the rough stone.

The Rising Sun

The other day as I prepared to rise for Mass, I would much have preferred to stay in bed.  Yet I had planned to rise.  Thus by resolute effort of will I shook off the warm covers and slid my feet to the floor, standing a bit shakily as I felt the weakness of my body from insufficient sleep.

Then the window drew my gaze—or rather the sight outside it.  For the sun was just rising, casting glorious golden gleams across the sky and clouds.

That beautiful sight was enough to rouse my heart to joy at being thus awake.  The sky continued glorious as I made my way outside and began the walk so well known and yet now changed with new construction and vanished trees.  My tiredness slipped away as I breathed in the warm, moist air, and I began to feel so alive—so gloriously alive.

Often through my life I have that same experience.  I do not wish to do something—in fact want only to do the opposite—and then I persevere only to experience something glorious like a small gift for my faithfulness. 

There is nothing like the glory of a sunrise.  It always seems like a small glimpse into heaven.  I feel as if this one in particular were prepared just for me to remind me that the Son smiles upon me.  May you find Him smiling upon you as you open your heart to see Him in all the little things as you tread faithfully toward Him!