Hymn to Mystery
By S. M. Feir
Slow Joy
The joy that dances, dazzling azure where it springs,
Dies quickly, without quarrel,
Stilled and startled into silence
By the daily round of little deaths
Of which, though dying, it does not dream.
But from that stillness stealing,
There comes a kind unkilled by care,
A joy which does not jump, whose light, softened by sorrow,
Stays longer, holds fast, not fading, though darkness drowns it deep,
And which is not resigned, but radiant with true beauty
When once risen from its baptism of grief.
Peregrin
No jesses now. No band of fear to bind
The broken will unwillingly
To that which, decaying,
Cannot kindle joy from grief.
No hood to hide the heart in false humility,
No bell to tell the tyrant time
Where soars the silently-singing soul
To seek its Source and end.
No lure but longing to lead the human home
To where humanity finds its fullness,
Where the mighty hand of mercy
Waits to heal the wanderer’s weary wings
With wounds of deepest love!
Advent Vigil
To watch in wonder for the waning of the night
Is what is welcomed now
As the dark draws down
And the quiet snow quells sound,
Bringing silence and stillness into being.
To willfully wait the journey into joy
Is what is needed now
When all seems to die
As drifts of dread come driving
To dim the sprouting hope of spring.
To keep kindled the fire of kindness
Is what is wanted now
Though moves the madness of unmercy,
Frosting friendship and letting love’s light
Be shivered into scattered shards.
To tarry tenderly time’s turning
Is what is given now
To the one who wishes
To claim kinship with the Coming King,
To dance at last in His undying day.
Latecomer
To follow the folk who followed the star
Is goal and gift enough for me,
Though all I have is brokenness to bring,
Dross and ash and scentless sorrow.
No star to set my course,
But only fading footsteps of faith
Which come and go among the shifting sands,
And which my own feet can fill but faintly.
They traveled far for truth,
The heavens hailing them onward,
And found their joy at journey’s end
In a place of precious poverty.
Now, I must run to meet them,
To catch their coat-tails, clinging close,
That I may find unfeigned felicity,
My poor offerings at last transfigured into theirs.
Eucharist
Oh, what is it to wake in willing wonder,
To glimpse afar in a fall of dream-dust
The glory resting royally within the real,
Love’s light lying like lace upon the ordinary?
Oh, what is it to take life as it comes,
To be in beauty’s sweet embrace
Amid the changing chances of the everyday,
To stand entranced by a world transfigured?
Only by giving all is grace to be gathered,
The sunderings of self laid bare,
No longer propped by pride in its prison of false freedom,
But, mingled with the myrrh of unmerited mercy,
Refashioned to rise, to dance once more in deathlessness.
Heaven’s Prayer
Look with longing, my lovely one, to the light that lingers,
Even as the dimming day dips low
And the want of winter wehlms your heart and half the world
With ice-rimed indifference to the debt owed by new life to the dying.
Listen, my lonely one, to the song within the silence,
Trumpeting from the centre of the truth of things,
That brings news of victory to the bruised and the battle-scarred,
Winging words of comfort to the disconsolate wanderer.
Draw near, my darkened one, to the hearth-fire’s heat,
To the warmth for which winter was made,
Casting to the crackle of the kindled might of mercy
The hard frost of hidden fear and lifeless love
Which keeps your spirit from turning toward the tenderness of spring.
Hymn to Mystery
Fathered in freedom from beyond forever,
You, the Fire that forms and feeds all things,
Wombing and willing the world to wakefulness amid the watches of eternity,
Came crying into kinship with creation,
Willing Yourself to flesh by an archangel’s word
And by a woman’s courageous assent,
Always from always, yet once born and bound in swaddling bands
To loose us from our long and weary languishing.
You came, aI say, a king in peasant’s pomp,
You whose beginningless life knew nothing of an end,
Till on the cross you cried with human tongue
And brought your boundless being into death
Which broke when it received your brokenness,
Spilling forth life, now freed, in its final throes,
Its Finitude pierced by your pre-eternal power.
Form me anew, Unfading Fire!
Seek me where I sit in silent solitude,
And teach me to sing Your song aright!
Crown me or consume me,
But do not leave me,
For You are the one to lead me home to full humanity!
Heart’s Fire
The kindling of the human heart to holy fire,
The living light of The eternal Kingdom,
Lies close, if the heart does not shrink from its heat.
Too often, however, timeful and timid,
It hides in learned helplessness,
Tomorrow-entangled or bound low by years of yesterdays,
Wrong-ridden and worn to almost nothing by worry
For a future that it has no power to see truly,
Or a plenteously-harvested past of hate and fear.
Today must be the dwelling of the heart, the dance
In which time and timelessness touch fingertips,
Treading the measure made new by meeting,
The only offering we are given to make
From a place of true freedom and trust,
Our finitude fired to fineness by infinite love
And given freely again as grace,
The transitory transfigured little by little
Till it shines at last in the light of the Never-setting Sun!
At Hand
Take joy from the simple act of turning,
From the golden gift of grace
Once given, again and again gained anew
With neither ending nor beginning,
A river ever flowing,
Each human heart its sea.
Pluck peace from the treasured truth of tears,
From creation’s very crucible,
Where dry bones dance and dust is made diamond
In the burning beauty of limitless love
Which spends itself in unspent mystery,
Weaving wonder from the leaves of wilted lilies,
Molding mortal mud into images of immortality.
If You Will
Come, if You will, and bring me to my knees!
Help me to kneel before Your knowing of me
That I might come to know You truly,
No fear or false vanity to veil me
From Your bright and burning beauty.
Claim, if You will, the little light I tend,
Drowned daily in the darkness of doubt
But kept aflame by ego’s false fuel,
And though always guttering, still feebly gleaming
With vainglory’s sputtering glow..
Bless, if You will, my brokenness to bow
In sheer and shining awe before Your living fire,
No longer standing stuck in dead delusion,
Now freed to find the fullness of joy,
Soul-deep and Spirit-spun,
Springing unspent and sparkling from Your unspeakable splendour!
Traveler’s Joy
The way of stone and steep may weary the wanderer,
May bruise and bring the heaven-haunted heart to breaking
By its love and longing for the one thing it lacks,
Communion, like the alchemy of sun and rain on rose,
With that which is its sundered source and end.
Yet, if the traveled road be true,
It’s footing firm-founded even amid thorns,
Then, steps no longer stumbling, will stand at gaze
The weary one, a mortal on the edge of immortality,
Incarnate death new-sealed beyond its dying self.
The traveler’s joy is tried for truth,
Proven by pain and tested by tears.
Its fertility flourishes where fire has passed,
No forests of false piety to pinch its roots,
but only water welling up from woe
To green the pathways of the heart,
And twine its wild hedgerows in wedding-bonds of blessedness.
Evangeline
Why wait when once the call has come?
Why waver on the edge of eternal joy?
The clarion cry of victory has sounded,
Sung lustily by saints with word, deed and death
Flung far across time’s chasm and beyond,
Bidding us to bound as deer upon the mountain!
Why worry for the woes of all the world?
Why stoop beneath what only God could bear
By being clothed in crownless clay,
Cross-crushed, entombed by tear-stained hands
That He might free the fullness of our finitude
From fallen fealty to the frailty of death?
Let us not hault till others catch us up,
But let us send the call to them with joy!
“Be of good courage! Follow fast!
Run well while yet your feet are on the ground!
Trust to the spark that speeds you on,
The fire of love freed finally from fear,
Whose light will live to drown death’s darkest dream”
On What Hill
On what hill will I die?
What blessed plot of ground will be the place
Wherein I plant my feet, burning with blisters,
Or fly my flag, filled with holes
Of half-kept promises and hollowed out principles?
Too many calls to arms or cries for justice?
Will there ever be a time to take my stand,
Staying steadfast against the storm,
Keeping moral courage in the face of this minute's mortal enemy?
In truth, I cannot trust one bit of earth,
For all seems shifting, unstable sand,
Today's cries for change becoming tomorrow's crumbled dreams,
Freedom finding no place to set her sacred foot,
A vagabond queen of hedges and ditches.
So all these hills I willingly surrender, save only one,
The skull's tomb, where scandal scaled the heights of glory!.
That hill, I pray, will always find me near,
That hill on which humanity was crowned anew,
Whom Christ bore bleeding into Paradise.
Eternal Eros
Pray, pilgrim, pause a while,
And rest you from your restlessness,
For I wish to know you better,
To teach you the true meaning of time,
Which is only myself, poured drop by drop
For you who cannot take myself entire,
Though I long to linger with you and join you on your journey.
But here, if you stay your steps for me,
That drop will flow over you like a flood,
Drenching but never drowning you,
Quenching without crushing your spirit,
bathing your bruises in unbroken beauty’s balsam,
For a while, alas, for only a while.
For now, our trysts must be few and far between,
Our moments chosen carefully that my touch will not shatter you.
Yet, little by little, if you stop when I call,
We will come to know each other well, if you will,
That when we meet at last as lovers do,
With time’s veil torn, full fair to each other’s eye,
You will claim me without fear as your own familiar friend.
Invitation
Ah! Bide a wee, beloved one, and live as lilies do.
Withdraw your will from the wealth of worldly woe
With its endless demands of empathy,
Its crises marching past for your convenient inspection,
And place it in My nail-printed palm.
Let Me loose it from false freedom’s fetters
And bind it freely to Myself,
No fear, no anguish needed to knit us near,
But trust in true love’s limitless longing
For fullness only found in me.
Fear not to find your deep desire dead within My life,,
For it will not be left to lie withering in the sun,
Nor will it cease from being what it was.
Together, we will polish it anew,
and name it with its true and holy name,
Bringing it, little by little, to brilliance,
That it might flood the agonies of this age with My sacred flame of peace.
Death’s Dying
Is it the final fall of night you truly fear,
Or do you dread the coming of the dawn?
Is death, so fleet of foot, the thing you flee,
Or is it real life from which you run
To hide yourself, a deer among the bushes?
You will drag your death behind you till you drop it,
Freeing it from the fetter your fear has made,
Its menace mastered by Immortal Love,
And given to you again in golden guise,
A winged steed to bear you far beyond
The broken beauty of grief’s dying day
Into gleaming groves of gateless, unguessed glory.
Your death must die to be reborn,
Or it will drive you on, shattered shadow though it be,
Poisoning your love and prisoning your heart
Within the walls of self-will’s narrow cell,
No way to seek your soul-deep sorrow’s source,
The loss of joy, which is its deepest spring.
But when timidity is transfigured into trust,
Your feet no longer dancing to death’s tune,
Then night becomes the doorway to the dawn,
Once-wounded wings hard-won now wonder-chased,
Finitude finally clothed in the spendless, spilling splendour
Of the very Life of life!
Echoes of Eden
Once wonder was,
Once will unwedded to weeping,
Once life which lay like first light over all
With love as both its source and end.
Once naming was knowing,
True words made for true things,
No power of possession in them,
But dreams drawn from the very Being of being
To bring the world to drink at wisdom’s well.
then came the day the namers named themselves,
Denying to spend what had been freely given,
Taking before time the thing that they were always meant to have,
Themselves trapped forever in themselves,
Now named anew by fear and broken freedom.
So selfhood sings its song down all the years,
Tears sowing salt within the human heart
Where Eden’s seed once had its place,
Planted long ago when new things, not yet named, still played
Amid unploughed plenty not parceled by pain.
Yet always the heart is haunted,
When the spring comes creeping, little by slowly,
To melt the winter’s might with mist-born mirth,
The green smell wetly waking it once more,
Softening it to silence amid a chorus of birds,
Letting it live for a time beyond mortality
To glimpse eternity in the deep and ancient echo of beginning.
Hush Now
Hush now! Do you hear?
Though howling winds hurl hatred,
Its stinging stones striking those who stand
And sing of seldom sought-for peace
Amid the weary wounds of war,
Ah! Do you hear?
From hedgerows edging humanity’s highways,
From woodlands green and wet with wonder,
From the place where mortal tears touch Eternal Truth,
the sound of flying footsteps comes stealing,
The lilt of lightsome laughter leaping lovely and clear
To greet the one with wit to welcome its wild wisdom.
That deep freedom can never be silenced,
Its thunder, soft as sighing, thrills through all,
Calling the living dead to the heights of undying love,
Bringing hidden healing to the bruised and broken heart,
Singing surely of deepest mercy without death,
Springing purely from the crowned and crucified Christ!
Fear Not
Fear not, dear friend, to follow fast in faith
The footsteps of Forever to the end
Which heralds but the birth of new beginning,
The bridal bower of finitude’s fulfilling,
Whose treasure is transfigured tears.
Cast off completely the clamour to which you cling,
The cry of cares for which no cure can come
Before the veil of time is torn
And final physic found for life’s long fever
That bathes you in eternal bliss’s balm.
Run lightly, little one, with joy to speed your journeying,
Love leading you guilelessly as guide and welcome guest,
Courage as your kind and true companion,
And hope your helping hand though hurts may hinder.
Start now, dear heart, and do not stay your going!
Fill your faltering lamp and hold it high!
He waits for you in willing welcome,
His arms held wide to take you to Himself,
His gift, the glory of His Godhead,
Given freely in friendship and limitless love.
Some Questions
Ah! Will we want what once we had
When grass no longer withers,
When glory gilds the smallest insect,
Bathing its once-brief being in beauty
Before our new-gathered, now-graced senses?
Will we long for less than all
When all is what we have,
When Lack no longer lights the way
To grief and grasping greed,
And more than enough comes at last to meet us?
Do we fear to find forever,
Our days and nights too dear to us
To let them drop down dead,
Their dance of dying deified
When now and then, soon and late, inherit always?
Is hell a haunting of unending want,
A wishing for what was amid festal fire,
A seeking for solace in what cannot come again
In the face of ancient brokenness now heald
By the wounds of its killed and risen King?
Bridegroom
Bridegroom, I will come to meet You,
If you will teach me to turn and leave
My love of lately-lingering sunsets,
My craving for bitter crumbs of beauty
Which do not satiate but sigh away into sadness
As false spring fails in a fresh fall of frost.
Bridegroom, I will come to know You,
If you will help me to know myself,
The flowers folded in among the flaws,
The grace that glorifies the grief—
The doorstep of Your dwelling place
Which lies along the highway of the heart.
Bridegroom, I will come to love You,
If You will let me learn the way
To worship Who You truly are,
The Word beyond all words of wonder,
The mortal man who danced with death
And deified our dyingness with joy!
Knowing Now
I know that now can be enough and more,
If then and soon will cease their singing,
No grudges held nor false futures grasped,
Only this moment truly met,
Its keen presence kindly kept within the heart.
Now is where mystery manifests itself
In its eternal tryst with time,
Its serenade to the sorrowing soul only heard
When behind and before are laid bear and laid by,
Now being freely embraced in its elemental simplicity,
Its fragility freshened with the attar of endless beginning.
Today
Today, I drown the dreams I drew in dust
Upon the darkened mirror of my soul,
The things I thought I owned because I made them,
My two hands shaping them to shining life, I was sure,
My mind desperately driven to make for them coats of meaning,
That my heart might take them for untrammelled truth.
Today, I leave the broken love I bear,
Which always seeks its own but never sings,
Which gazes at gifts, divining in them what is due
To its deadly devotion to desire,
False brightness fed on brittle bonds of fealty
To fleeting things which nourish only nothingness by their going.
Today, I let my life begin anew,
Surrendering to sorrow and to joy,
Following the deifying dance of faith and doubt,
Living toward dying on the doorstep of deathlessness,
Heart’s longing leading me to limitless life,
My whole being bound at last to what is true.
And tomorrow,
I will do it all
Again.
Theoria
There is a thing unthought, unfelt, unguessed,
A gift in guise of deepest grief,
A weeping wound hiding a holy joy
As midnight masks the dawning of the day,
Though still it waits its rightful time to rise.
It sings through sighs and tells itself in tears
As beads are told with whispered words of longing and of love,
Its mystery manifested in melancholy,
Though minted in unmingled mirth
And founded at the fountainhead of mercy and of peace.
Its beauty lends brightness to its darkened dress,
Lacing loss with love, fining it with wondrous filigree,
Chasing sorrow with wisdom as a chalice is chased with silver,
Twining tragedy and truth in a timeless tapestry,
Spinning spirit into soul and out again,
Divinity drowning it at last in unending ecstasy!
Comforter
O Immanence immortally in-dwelling all things,
O Gentle Breeze that breaks on brittle bones
And brings them leaping into life,
Sing softly to the sundered soul of one who waits
With weary welcome to live Your life of joy,
Unhindered by dreams of a dying age.
Come and dance Truth to me in triumph
As bees dance directions and warnings to one another on the wind!
Teach me to find the best flowers, the sweetest nectar,
That I may bear that blessing on my broken wings,
Borne by You, O Beauty’s Breath,
And make of this life, which is only lent for a time,
Something timeless, lifted by love to the Last Things.
O Changeless change, Heart’s Holy Enchanter!
Let me look first to Your freedom
And then to the world as it is,
That Your song might sound through all my days,
Leading me little by little through dying’s doorway
Into eternity’s divine deathlessness!
Becoming Agape
Becoming Agape
While standing agape
As the world whirls with a will
From worry to worry and war to war
Is hard, because I am hard.
It is the best of all loves, and the worst,
Existing here as fullness that breaks itself into being
In a feast shared over the dead by the dying,
A meal of peace given piecemeal
When mood suits or occasion demands.
To be made that love which bears all things
Means being borne as a corpse through the streets of self-will
By Him who bore His own death, and mine, and yours,
In every part of His cross-crushed, cross-conquering body,
Binding us in His boundless freedom
To break upon the world as He was broken,
Like the morning mist of mercy on the wilderness of the heart
Which, pruned and tended, is soon turned into Paradise.
Before All
Before all, friend, seek first the fairest thing,
The dearest dream that draws your spirit near
To where your deepest wish waits wordlessly,
That beauty’s borrowed wings might take you onward
Past the clinging claims of care
To find afar your first and truest trust,
A fealty beyond all fear or favour,
New-born, beginningless, bound only by eternity.
Oh, do not linger longer than you must
Amid the unrequited embers of this age,
But let your stumbling footsteps lead you forth
Along the royal way to wonder’s well
Where thirst is slaked, fulfillment found, and joy,
Beyond all heart-borne burdens, burns
Yet does not fail, its fire fed by faith
And tended timelessly by mercy’s measureless love.
The Place of Green
Into the place of green I will go each day,
Though the world cries “be a desert!” to my soul,
Croaking like the turkey vulture over its dead,
Bringing the rattle of locusts where meadowlarks once laughed,
Lifting their voices as their wings lofted them
Upon the breezes of the breaking, now broken, dawn.
Still, Oh! still I hear it singing,
Somewhere beneath the madness and the murder,
Beneath the vacant chorus of voices
That seek to make of me a dry river,
A thirsty thing that would as soon drink poisoned water as sweet.
Still I hear it and still I seek it,
The morning song flowing deeply from the dayspring
And the chanting of night things as they seek their sustenance.
For the green still grows amid the grief,
Amid the weary world’s deep disdain for itself,
And from it I will bring a vine each day,
A sacred branch bowed down with fruit,
And if my feet do not fail and my arms do not tire,
I will tend these treasures in hope,
Making good of what I can,
Till I too am planted in the place of green.
May His Memory Be
(For Fr. J.)
May his memory be eternal,
Who placed into my waiting hands the harp of hope,
Bidding me to wring silver from its singing strings
With the fingers of fervent faith,
To trust in the truth of beauty
And to soar aloft upon the lightsome wings
Of whatever is good and lovely.
May his memory be perennial,
Who gave me the courage to care for myself,
To look to all the little things for joy,
The old things, the true things,
The things of childhood which bring us home,
And the loves and longings which send us forth once more.
May his memory be immortal,
Though autumn comes to kill the kindness of summer
With the blazing glory of its grief,
Though the winter of despair will spend, again and again,
The fires I have stoked against it,
Though life itself cannot linger here as long as we would wish,
May, Oh! May his memory be!
To Your Call
To Your Call, O my Christ, I will come,
Though not, for now at least,
Like a dutiful dog to heel,
Nor even—dare I say it?—
Like a lost sheep seeking shelter,
Though the wolf runs close behind
And Your voice is the only one I trust
To bring me where I need to be.
No, I will come like a child,
Chilled to the bone and burned by the wind
In the deepening dusk of a winter day,
Who hears the call to food and fire
But still believes the snow to be a wondrous thing,
A fellow-conspirator in fancy and fun,
Though the sun has long-since gone its steeply-slanting way
To where it will rest beneath a blanket of cold stars.
Yes, I will come like that,
Finger-numbed, nose-nipped, foot-frozen and hungry,
And I will sit beside Your fire,
Slowly thawing, painfully coming back to life,
Reluctantly leaving the snow to itself,
While I remember the meaning of warmth and of wonder,
For the stars are in the fire too,
And the hearth is filled with the ancient and eternal fragrance
Of the sacred incense of invitation.
THE END
Written between August 16, 2024 and July 12, 2025