Redeeming the Time

We know self-knowledge isn't what it used to be,
and neither still are we; our movement's all we know,
and time, instead of being our redemptive space,
became the empty click-tick of the worker's clock.

Where has the quiet gone? we sometimes ask ourselves,
then mindless fill our eye and ear with hollow noise,
then heedless live as though we have no mortal breath --
but some bright blessed day we'll finally exhale.

If we could hear our hearts true beating, now and now,
then that clear knock would sound within our inner space,
and then, perhaps, we might at least place ear to door
to see who might be waiting on the other side.

It's paradoxical that we must lose ourselves
in order to regain our truest, brightest selves,
or, truly, to have found ourselves the first time here,
where deeply wrote the hand of God's incarnate Son.

The fear is shattering, but joy's a deeper break,
and broken we must be if we're to be transformed
from strangely twisted, less than human shapes and hues
to beauty, light, and life -- incarnate sons of God.

So deep we go, and meet the image of our God,
and humbly we must walk, and humbly we must walk,
our emptiness our only true possession now,
we offer up ourselves as vessels of the Light.

Copyright © 2004 by Andrew Stephen Damick