He was lifted up,
and a cloud took him out of their sight.
—Acts 1.9
Now, standing on this godforsaken hillside
comes the real test:
to trust the God who absconds,
whose icon is empty air
with a light breeze.
The feeling that there once was more—
wasn’t there?—but not now;
once a simple certainty
that there was someone there,
but now that gray hollow in your guts,
the grief over your childhood faith,
the empty chair, the faint vale
in the other side of the bed.
And given that, to trust.
The Beloved has departed
the world of the senses
to be even more present,
a mystery for us, about us,
without us.
Not someone who is loving,
but love itself, loving.
Now we learn to be at home
in this peripheral God
who, like sleep, or the present moment,
in being perceived, disappears.
Now we learn a new faith,
to trust without feeling,
to breathe air we can’t see.
Above our wondering heads
birds migrate along their invisible paths.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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