Jesus calms the storm Echternach Gospel book
Some Reflections
“Don’t you care?
We’re all going to drown!”
His face of love and concern
Looks me right in the eye
Knowing my fear
Seeing the tempest inside
He speaks
“Peace! Be still!”
In an instant, everything changed
His eyes met mine again
A greater fear arose
“Why are you so afraid?
Do you still have no faith?”
- Jason Muckley
THE STORM
Although they had said
He was a carpenter,
I could tell by his talk
That he knew all about water.
With words he could turn
The agitated crushing sea
Into a motionless solid beam
Of undressed timber ;
Or with words again, conjure,
From the winding grain of wood
The uneasy movement of a river.
There had been that time,
Very early on,
When he had come in our boat,
And we were overtaken
By a storm.
The waves beat about the craft,
until we thought we were gone,
And all the while
he was asleep in the stern.
One of us had awoken him
and angrily said,
“Do you care if we drown?”
and he had stood up
in the middle of the boat,
and unfurling his robes
like a sail,
gave an enormous shout.
And he screamed and screamed
until nothing existed
but the noise
coming from his mouth;
and the boat seemed to turn
not to the tumult of the storm,
but on the axle of his throat.
and when he finally stopped,
it was as if the wind and rain
had been sucked into his gullet,
for the lake and sky were subdued.
And he turned around, and smiled,
and said,”Brothers,you lack faith.”
Then he lay down once more
with his head on the pillow,
and fell asleep.
And soon he was as still
as the dark waters
that surrounded us.
Up until then the sea
had been my master.
But now I had a new master,
his wet head resting unconcerned,
as we drifted on.
- John W. Sexton
Wild Nature and Experience
Healed Ere We Are Aware
No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to know these mountains. As well seek to warm the naked and frost bitten by lectures on caloric and pictures of flame. One day’s exposure to mountains is better than carloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographer’s plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul. All that is required is exposure, and purity of material. The pure in heart shall see God! … Come to the woods, for here is rest. … The galling harness of civilization drops off, and we are healed ere we are aware.
–John Muir 1838-1914
But if you wish to know how these things come about,
ask grace not instruction,
desire not understanding,
the groaning of prayer not diligent reading,
the Spouse not the teacher,
God not man,
darkness not clarity,
not light but the fire
that totally inflames and carries us into God
by ecstatic unctions and burning affections.
– Bonaventure 1221-1274
The Soul’s Journey Into God
The goal is not to read a book;
the goal is to read the story
taking place all around us.
-Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme
Thou mastering me
God! Giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland (first verse)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844-1889
God’s Grandeur
Jesus Calms the Storm Rembrandt