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Sunday
Sewanee English professor Jennifer Michael has alerted me to the spiritual poetry of Mary Karr, including this lyric on meditation. In it, the poet imagines that “a weightless hand” is guiding her, softly pressing her “in the back’s low hollow,” and that, like a sailboat tacking against the wind, she goes there.
This “there” is the world revealed when the meditator’s third eye, with the aid of eucalyptus, is opened. (Eucalyptus is used in meditation to clear the mind, promote clear thinking and dispel anxiety.) In “the wide vermilion sky” that cradled us before birth, I am reminded of Wordsworth’s own account of birth: “But trailing clouds of glory do we come/ From God, who is our home.” As Karr sees it, the sun that pours “its golden sap” is like the resin of primeval forests that captures and preserves ancient insects in timeless amber. We glow, preserved, in God’s love.
Julian of Norwich could say about this “precious insect” what she says about the hazelnut that was the focus of her own meditation: God made it, God loves it, God keeps it.
Meditatio
By Mary Karr
In the back’s low hollow sometimes
a weightless hand guides me, gentle pressure
so I tack soft as a sailboat. (Go there)
Soften the space between your eyes (smudge
of eucalyptus), the third eye opens.
There’s the wide vermilion sky
that cradled us before birth,
and the sun pours its golden sap
to preserve me like His precious insect.
