Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,
Skies, and be perfect!
Fly vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,
And disappear.
You moon, be slow to go down,
This is your fill!
The four white roads make off in silence
Towards the four parts of the starry universe.
Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth.
We have become more humble than the rocks,
More wakeful than the patient hills.
Charm with your stainlessness these nights in Advent, holy spheres,
While minds, as meek as beasts,
Stay close at home in the sweet hay;
And intellects are quieter than the flocks that feed by starlight.
Oh pour your darkness and your brightness over all our solemn valleys,
Your skies: and travel like the gentle Virgin,
Towards the planets' stately setting,
O white moon full as quiet as Bethlehem!
--Thomas Merton
Makes me wonder what if the likes of St. Francis was right and the incarnation was an event unique in the history of the universe which not only changed the course of history for humans here but for animals and the entire universe.
ReplyDeleteMaybe one of our problems is that we're too timid to imagine such a possibility anymore. What if people are the only intelligent life in the universe or any universe?