It has been a long time since a post, and I can attribute my hiatus to a combination of school work and marriage prep that has taken precedence over most leisure pursuits in the past several months.
The following poem was written in response to a sermon I heard last Lent, and which had been on my mind in the recent weeks. I was reflecting on how I identified with and admired the woman who anointed Jesus during passion week. What a woman! To enter a room filled with men, no doubt discussing "important" things, and to break it all apart by a "useless" act of adoration. I was struck by Jesus' response to the criticism she received: "She has done a beautiful thing to me." (Mark 4:6) Beautiful. This is a moment in scripture where the aesthetic is elevated--when it is properly focused of course. He does not say she has done a smart thing or a wise thing or try and tell everyone that she has made a radical statement through her act. No. He calls it what it is: beautiful; and that is enough to justify it.
When I feel the darkness and oppressiveness of the world--its political anxieties and harsh and dividing polemics, the act of this woman reminds me that God holds high the beautiful offerings along with offerings of weighty matter. When I rejoice towards God about the patch of sunlight hitting an emerging daffodil just right so that the daffodil's petals become transparent trumpets casting a buttery shadow on freshly laid mulch, I can have confidence that he isn't raising his eyebrows and asking me why I'm not thinking more about war and poverty.
3/30/12 Lent
“Beautiful”
Despite soft spring
puddles—sticky green
Fuzz
It is a dark topic dinner
Dialog of death
--unrest, politics, religion—
debates dance in dirge
So fitting then, you find—
Fugitive woman in a
World of men—to fumble
Forward
--fragrant
offering
pleasing to the Lord
Bemused murmurs but he
Speaks, “beautiful”
And silences—beleagured
Brow drips oil
Blessed for burial
You gag as sweet smell
So strong from
The shards of
alabaster
Soaked in nard
Fill the sick room
Days hence you
Will follow the same
Smell rising from a
Bent back
Burdened and doomed
Each sweat drop sweet,
thick with blood
And perfume
“beautiful”
