Thought of the week
You are my God,
teach me to do your will.
- St. Francis of Assisi
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On a bright sunny day,
The honey-scented wind
Teases the dew-beaded leaves
Alongside a brook
And gently swings
A dew-laden spider’s web
Stretched between two goldenrod stems.
The most sparkling of those morning pearls
Is called Crystal.
Wild with freedom and space,
It savours a tumultuous happiness.
Eyes filled with light,
It ceaselessly admires
The beauty of the world
In its original blessedness
And unfurls the whole film
Of the human and cosmic adventure
Of that sacred community.
Suddenly, an idle wind
Teases the sparkling trap.
Laughingly, Crystal rocks…
Its heart seemingly holding an eternal Spring
And an intact purity.
But, suddenly, the spider’s web quivers
And Crystal falls
On the cold and humid soil.
Worried, it now searches for the meaning of its fate
And its new path in life.
It experiences exasperating struggles,
Internal eddies and upheavals.
Abruptly a strange form carries it
Towards a narrow pass
Laden with thick darkness.
In spite of its rugged struggle
Against this dominating sovereign,
Crystal is unable to hold back,
Forced headlong into a path
Which draws it, unwilling, towards a strange adventure
While anguish alone distinguishes it from the dead.
But fate kisses its hand
As a tender friend.
The stream running close by, carries it
Towards new horizons.
Crystal then decides to let fate take its course
Through nonchalant twists and turns,
Gliding through plains
Webbed by grass already turning yellow.
But it realizes
That the water in which it has fallen
Has lost its innocence.
Unwilling to remain in such polluted surroundings,
In a silence devoid of dreams
Crystal then wildly races ahead
Along streams and rivers
Hoping, finally, to find a better environment.
Hopelessly, it hurls itself impetuously
Towards the immensity of the ocean
Hoping, at last, to rock on the vast blue surface.
But its hope is brusquely dashed…
Weighed down with sadness, its hair dishevelled
In a veil of darkness…
In the depths of its being
It knows that it will nevermore be able to offer to the living
The virginal water
Of the World’s first morn.
Ever since, Crystal struggles,
In vain shouts at the top of its voice,
Its intense confusion and deep anxiety
Because it does not recognize in the Garden
The original scenario of Creation.
Parable of a dewdrop
The irresponsibility of men and women
Who are wind and breath, water and earth
Have broken the sacred Cycle of life.
It ceasessly proclaims that a reconciliation
Must come to be, in all urgency,
For a definitive bonding
Of the Planet community
With Humanity : the icon of the Trinity.
Lise Berger, sjsh
1996